Wednesday, December 31, 2025

You Miss 100% of the Shots You Don't Take

LM EdwardWednesday, December 31, 2025 No comments

"You Miss 100% of the Shots You Don't Take" — The Quote That Changed How We Think About Failure

The Origin Story: Who Actually Said It First?

Let's get one thing straight before we dive in — and yes, this is going to matter. The quote "You miss 100% of the shots you don't take" is almost universally credited to Wayne Gretzky, the hockey legend so dominant that they literally called him The Great One. But here's where it gets deliciously complicated: Michael Scott, the lovably clueless regional manager from NBC's The Office, is equally famous for saying it — and always attributing it to Gretzky.

So now we have a three-layer citation sandwich: Wayne Gretzky said it, Michael Scott quoted it, and Michael Scott attributed it to Wayne Gretzky. The internet, naturally, went completely sideways with this. You've probably seen the meme a thousand times. But behind all the laughs and the memes and the t-shirts, there's something remarkably profound sitting in that short, punchy sentence that deserves a serious look.

Because here's the truth — whether you're a hockey legend, a fictional paper company manager, or just a regular person staring at a job application you've been avoiding for three weeks, this quote applies to you. It's not just a motivational poster tagline. It's a fundamental truth about human psychology, risk-taking, and the strange, paralyzing fear of trying.

What the Quote Actually Means (Beyond the Obvious)

On the surface, it sounds almost insultingly simple. Of course, you miss shots you don't take. That's just math. You can't score if you don't shoot. Thanks, Wayne. Super helpful.

But slow down for a second. The reason this quote has survived decades, spawned thousands of memes, and still gets plastered on office walls everywhere isn't because it tells us something we didn't know. It's because it tells us something we keep forgetting.

Human beings are wired for loss aversion. Psychologists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky figured this out back in the 1970s, and it's been confirmed about a million times since: we feel the pain of losing something roughly twice as intensely as we feel the pleasure of gaining the same thing. Which means, on a primal, gut level, the fear of missing a shot (and looking foolish) almost always feels bigger than the excitement of potentially scoring.

That's why we don't send the email. We don't ask for the raise. We don't start the business. We don't say "I love you" first. We don't submit the manuscript. We stand at the edge of the moment, hockey stick in hand, completely frozen — and we tell ourselves all kinds of sophisticated, rational-sounding stories about why this isn't the right time, why we're not ready, why the odds aren't good enough.

And Wayne Gretzky, in exactly fourteen words, cuts through all of that.

Wayne Gretzky: The Man Who Understood Risk Better Than Almost Anyone

You can't talk about this quote without talking about the man behind it, because Wayne Gretzky's entire career was a masterclass in defying conventional wisdom about risk.

He wasn't the biggest player on the ice. He wasn't the fastest. By NHL standards, he was practically undersized. Every single scout and coach who evaluated him early in his career had perfectly logical reasons why he wasn't supposed to dominate the sport the way he did. And yet — by the time he retired in 1999 — he held 61 NHL records. Sixty-one. He scored more goals than any other player in NHL history, and here's the jaw-dropping part: his assists alone would make him the all-time leading scorer even without counting a single goal.

The man took shots. Constantly. Relentlessly. He took bad shots, he took long shots, he took shots when the angle was terrible and the odds were worse. And yes, he missed plenty of them. But he also rewrote every record book in the sport.

His philosophy wasn't recklessness — it was calculated audacity. There's a massive difference. Gretzky didn't fire pucks randomly at the net, hoping something would stick. He studied the game obsessively, positioned himself where the puck was going to be rather than where it was, and then trusted himself enough to pull the trigger when the moment arrived. Risk and preparation aren't opposites — they're partners.

The Psychology of Not Taking the Shot

Let's talk about what actually happens in your brain when you decide not to take the shot. Because this is where things get really interesting — and really uncomfortable.

There's a cognitive phenomenon called anticipated regret, and it works in two directions. You can regret things you did, or you can regret things you didn't do. Research consistently shows that in the short term, people tend to regret actions — the risks they took that didn't pan out. But in the long term — and we're talking years, decades, deathbeds — people almost universally report that their deepest regrets are about inaction. The paths not taken. The words not spoken. The businesses not started. The shots not taken.

There's even a name for the mental gymnastics we do to avoid taking shots: omission bias. It's the tendency to judge harmful actions more harshly than equally harmful inactions. In other words, we give ourselves a moral and emotional pass for doing nothing, even when doing nothing produces exactly the outcome we were trying to avoid.

Basically, our brains are running a pretty sophisticated con on us. We think we're being cautious and wise when we don't take the shot. In reality, we're just choosing a different kind of failure — the invisible kind, the kind that doesn't sting right away but accumulates quietly over years into something called regret.

Real-World Examples: When Not Taking the Shot Costs Everything

History is absolutely littered with people who didn't take the shot — and paid for it spectacularly.

Decca Records rejected The Beatles in 1962. The now-infamous quote from their audition: "guitar groups are on the way out." Decca chose not to sign them. Four guys from Liverpool went on to become the best-selling music artists in history. That's one very expensive missed shot.

Blockbuster had the chance to buy Netflix for $50 million in 2000. They passed. Netflix is now worth roughly $300 billion. Blockbuster filed for bankruptcy in 2010. The executives who said no probably think about that meeting every single day.

Xerox invented the graphical user interface — the thing that makes your computer look like your computer, with windows and icons and a mouse. They didn't pursue it commercially. Steve Jobs saw it during a tour of Xerox PARC, immediately understood what he was looking at, and built it into the Macintosh. Xerox sat on a revolution and watched Apple change the world with it.

These aren't small examples. These are billion-dollar, industry-defining, history-altering moments that came down to somebody choosing not to take the shot. The shot was sitting right there. They looked at it, felt the fear, ran the numbers in their heads, decided the risk was too high — and missed 100% of it.

How Fear of Failure Masquerades as Wisdom

This one's sneaky, and it's worth spending some real time on, because this is the part where most motivational content completely drops the ball.

Fear of failure doesn't usually show up looking like fear. It's not a trembling voice and sweaty palms (though sure, sometimes). More often, it shows up wearing the costume of wisdom, maturity, and practicality. It says things like:

"I just want to make sure I'm fully prepared before I launch."
"Now isn't the right time — the market conditions aren't ideal."
"I need to do more research first."
"I don't want to come across as pushy/desperate/arrogant."
"I'll start on Monday."

Every single one of those sentences can be completely legitimate. And every single one of them can also be fear in a trench coat, pretending to be reason.

The trick is learning to tell the difference — and honestly, the easiest test is this: Have you been "preparing" for more than six months? Because after a certain point, preparation isn't preparation anymore. It's a delay tactic with better PR.

Gretzky didn't wait until he had the perfect angle. He skated toward where the puck was going and took the shot with the information he had. Perfect information never arrives. Perfect timing is mostly a myth. The shot is available now, or it isn't available at all.

Taking the Shot in Real Life: What It Actually Looks Like

Alright, so we've established that not taking shots is bad, fear is sneaky, and Wayne Gretzky was arguably the most efficient human being to ever hold a hockey stick. Great. But what does "taking the shot" actually look like in everyday life? Because "just do it" is about as useful as telling someone who's drowning to "just swim."

Let's get specific.

Taking the shot in your career means sending the application for the job you're 70% qualified for, not waiting until you tick every single box. Research — actual HR research — consistently shows that men apply for jobs when they meet roughly 60% of the requirements, while women tend to wait until they meet 100%. That gap in shot-taking translates directly into a gap in career advancement. The qualification bar isn't a checklist — it's a suggestion. Take the shot.

Taking the shot in relationships means saying what you actually feel instead of waiting for the other person to go first. It means having the hard conversation before it becomes a catastrophic conversation. It means telling someone you care about them while you still have the chance. The number of people who've stood at a graveside wishing they'd said something — that's a number too high to count. Take the shot.

Taking the shot in entrepreneurship means launching the thing before it's perfect, because it's never going to be perfect. Every successful product you've ever used started as a version that embarrassed its creator. Reid Hoffman, the founder of LinkedIn, famously said that if you're not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you launched too late. Take the imperfect, scrappy, not-quite-ready shot.

Taking the shot in creativity means posting the article, submitting the manuscript, sharing the painting, recording the song — before you're absolutely certain it's good enough. The brutal reality of creative work is that "good enough" is a horizon that keeps moving. You will never feel ready. The work will never feel finished. At some point, you have to decide the shot is worth taking and pull the trigger.

The Math of Missing: Why More Shots Always Wins

Here's something the fear-brain doesn't want you to think about too clearly: the math always favors taking more shots.

Let's say you take 10 shots at something important — a new business idea, a creative project, a career pivot — and you have a 20% success rate. That's 2 successes. That's 2 things that worked.

Now, let's say you're so afraid of failure that you only take 2 shots, and you still have a 20% success rate. That's 0.4 successes. Roughly zero. You've protected yourself from 8 rejections — and also from 2 wins.

Volume and variance are your friends. This is what the most prolific creators, entrepreneurs, and innovators in history understood intuitively. Thomas Edison didn't invent the lightbulb on his first try — by some accounts, he made over a thousand attempts before finding one that worked. He famously reframed every failed attempt not as a failure but as successfully discovering one more way that didn't work. That's not just a cute perspective shift — it's a mathematically sound strategy. More shots, more data, more chances for one of them to land.

James Dyson built 5,126 prototypes of his vacuum cleaner before finding the one that worked. Five thousand, one hundred and twenty-six shots that didn't go in before the one that revolutionized household appliances and made him a billionaire. If he'd stopped at prototype number 500 because he was tired of missing, you'd probably never have heard his name.

The people who seem extraordinarily lucky often aren't luckier than average — they've just taken more shots and increased the number of opportunities for luck to show up.

How to Train Yourself to Take More Shots

Because knowing you should take shots and actually doing it are two very different things, let's talk about some concrete ways to rewire the shot-avoidance instinct.

Start with small, low-stakes shots. This is basically exposure therapy for your fear of trying. Take one small, slightly uncomfortable shot every day. Email someone you admire. Post something you're proud of. Pitch a small idea. Each successful attempt — even ones that don't "work" — builds evidence that the world doesn't end when you put yourself out there.

Set a "rejection quota." This sounds perverse, but it's genuinely effective. Give yourself a goal of, say, 10 rejections per month. Chase them actively. What happens is counterintuitive: you stop dreading rejection and start treating it as a checkpoint on the way to your actual goal. Author Jia Jiang did this for 100 days straight, deliberately seeking rejection, and the results were extraordinary — including one famous interaction where he asked a Krispy Kreme employee to make him a box of donuts shaped like the Olympic rings, and the employee just... did it. He said yes. The shot went in.

Make the cost of not trying explicit. Write it down. If you don't take this shot, what does your life look like in five years? In ten? Regret is abstract until you make it concrete. Once you've actually sat with the weight of what "not trying" means over a long timeline, the fear of trying suddenly looks a lot smaller by comparison.

Separate the outcome from the attempt. Your worth as a person isn't determined by whether the shot goes in. Gretzky missed shots constantly. The greatest basketball player of all time — Michael Jordan — missed over 9,000 shots in his career. The attempt is always within your control. The outcome often isn't. Focus your identity on being someone who takes shots, not someone who only makes them.

What Success Looks Like When You Actually Start Taking Shots

Here's the part that doesn't get talked about enough in these conversations — what happens on the other side.

When you start taking shots consistently, something shifts. It's not that everything starts working out perfectly. That's not how this goes, and anyone who tells you otherwise is selling something. What actually happens is subtler and more powerful: you stop being afraid of the miss.

The first rejection still stings. The second one stings a little less. By the tenth, you've built a callus. Not a numbness — a callus. You still feel it, but it doesn't stop you. And then something remarkable happens: you start noticing which shots are going in. You start learning what works and what doesn't. You start making adjustments. Your aim gets better. Your timing improves. The percentage of shots that land starts to climb.

This is the part that looks like talent from the outside. People watch someone operating with confidence and precision and assume they were born with it. They weren't. They just took a lot of ugly, embarrassing, unsuccessful shots in private before the world started paying attention.

Gretzky wasn't born great. He was born with aptitude, and he spent thousands of hours on the ice taking shot after shot, learning the geometry of the game, understanding how the puck moved, and where the net was going to be. The greatness was a product of the practice. The practice was a product of the willingness to take shots, miss, and take another one.

Conclusion: The Shot You Don't Take Has Already Missed

Here's where we land, and it's worth sitting with for a moment.

"You miss 100% of the shots you don't take" isn't motivational fluff. It's a statistical fact dressed up in a hockey metaphor. The shot you don't take hasn't been "not missed yet." It has already missed. It missed the moment you decided not to take it. The regret that lives on the other side of un-taken shots doesn't come from trying and failing — it comes from knowing you had the stick in your hand, the angle was decent, the window was open, and you let it close without firing.

Wayne Gretzky understood something that most of us spend our whole lives circling around: the cost of inaction is always higher than the cost of failure. Failure teaches you something. It gives you data, experience, calluses, and occasionally a really good story. Inaction gives you nothing but the quiet, creeping accumulation of "what if."

So whatever your shot looks like — the email you haven't sent, the business you haven't started, the conversation you've been avoiding, the creative work sitting in a folder on your desktop — take it. Not because it's guaranteed to go in. Not because the timing is perfect or you're completely ready. Take it because you are currently in the process of missing 100% of it, and that outcome is the only one that's absolutely certain if you keep your stick on the ice.

The net is right there. You've got the puck. Take the shot.

You Should Try to Be Better Than You Were Yesterday

LM EdwardSunday, June 01, 2025 No comments

The Only Person You Should Try to Be Better Than Is the Person You Were Yesterday

Why Competing With Yourself Is the Ultimate Power Move

Let's be real for a second. We live in a world that's absolutely obsessed with comparison. Social media feeds are basically highlight reels of everyone else's best days, and there you are, scrolling at 11 PM in your pajamas, wondering why you haven't launched a startup, run a marathon, or learned to make sourdough bread that doesn't resemble a hockey puck. Sound familiar?

Here's the thing, though — and this is the kind of truth that'll quietly rearrange the furniture in your brain — the only person you should ever try to be better than is the person you were yesterday. That's it. That's the whole game. Everything else is just noise.

This isn't some fluffy motivational poster quote your aunt shares on Facebook. This is a genuinely powerful philosophy that, when you actually live it rather than just nodding at it, transforms the way you approach growth, relationships, work, and, honestly, your entire life. So buckle up, grab your coffee (or tea, we don't judge), and let's dig into why your only real competition has always been you.

The Comparison Trap: Why Measuring Yourself Against Others Is a Losing Game

Here's a fun fact: no matter how good you get at something, there will always — and we mean always — be someone better. There's always a faster runner, a sharper entrepreneur, a more eloquent writer, a more ripped gym-goer. Always. It's basically a universal law, like gravity or the rule that says you'll always spill something on yourself right before an important meeting.

When you make other people your benchmark, you're essentially handing over the controls of your self-worth to a bunch of variables you have zero control over. Someone else's success, someone else's head start, someone else's resources, their connections, their lucky breaks — none of that is in your lane. And yet, we torture ourselves with it daily.

Psychologists call this "social comparison theory," first introduced by Leon Festinger back in 1954. The basic idea is that humans naturally evaluate their opinions and abilities by comparing themselves to others. It was probably useful back in caveman days when you needed to figure out if you were fast enough to outrun the mammoth. But in the modern world? It's mostly just making us miserable.

The sneaky thing about comparison is that it's almost never apples-to-apples but might be apples-to-grapes. You're comparing your behind-the-scenes to everyone else's highlight reel. You see someone's polished LinkedIn post about landing a dream job and you don't see the 47 rejections, the anxiety attacks, the ramen dinners, and the three-year grind that preceded it. You're comparing your Chapter 3 to their Chapter 27, and then wondering why you feel like a failure. That's not just unfair — it's mathematically absurd.

The Beauty of Personal Benchmarking: What It Actually Means to Compete With Yourself

So if external comparison is out, what's in? Personal benchmarking. And before you roll your eyes thinking this sounds like corporate HR speak, hear us out — this is genuinely the most effective framework for growth that exists.

Personal benchmarking means using your past self as your reference point. Did you run a mile slower last month? Were you less patient with your kids a year ago? Did you used to panic every time you had to speak in public? Those are your real metrics. Those are the numbers that matter.

The beauty of this approach is multifold. First, it's completely within your control. You can't make someone else fail so you look better by comparison (and if you're trying to, that's a whole different article). But you absolutely can show up slightly more prepared, slightly more rested, slightly more intentional than you did the day before. That's yours. Nobody can take it from you.

Second, progress against your own baseline is always meaningful. When you beat someone else, the win feels hollow unless you also grew in the process. But when you outperform your past self — even by a little — there's a satisfaction that sticks. It's clean. It's earned. It doesn't come with any asterisks.

Third, and this is the part that really gets people, it's sustainable. Motivation that comes from jealousy or competition burns fast and dirty, like newspaper in a fireplace. Motivation that comes from genuine personal investment in your own growth? That's a slow-burning log. It lasts.

The Compound Effect: Why Small Daily Improvements Add Up to Extraordinary Results

You've probably heard of compound interest in the context of money — the idea that small, consistent gains snowball into massive wealth over time. Well, the exact same principle applies to personal growth, and it's just as staggering when you do the math.

If you get just 1% better at something every day, you'll be 37 times better by the end of a year. Not 365% better — 37 times better. That's not a typo. That's the power of compounding applied to self-improvement, and it'll make your head spin if you sit with it long enough.

Now, "1% better" doesn't mean you need to have some measurable, quantifiable improvement every single day. It might mean you listened a little more carefully in a conversation. You chose the salad over the fries (once — we're not monsters). You spent 10 minutes reading instead of doomscrolling. You apologized when you didn't have to. These tiny, seemingly inconsequential choices are the actual building blocks of a better life.

The legendary investor Warren Buffett didn't wake up one morning as the Oracle of Omaha. He read voraciously, made disciplined decisions day after day, decade after decade, and let the compound effect do its slow and magnificent work. The same goes for every great athlete, artist, scientist, or leader you've ever admired. They weren't born extraordinary. They became extraordinary through the relentless, unglamorous accumulation of slightly-better days.

Identity Shift: How "Being Better Than Yesterday" Changes Who You Think You Are

Here's where things get genuinely fascinating — and a little philosophical, so stay with us.

When you commit to being better than your past self, something interesting happens over time: your identity starts to shift. And this matters enormously, because we don't just act according to our goals. We act according to who we believe we are.

James Clear, author of Atomic Habits, nails this when he talks about identity-based habits. He argues that the most effective form of behavior change isn't outcome-based ("I want to run a marathon") or process-based ("I will run four times a week") — it's identity-based ("I am a runner"). When your self-concept catches up with your consistent actions, everything gets easier. You're not fighting yourself anymore. You're just being yourself.

But here's the kicker: that identity shift doesn't happen because you beat someone else. It happens because you showed up for yourself, again and again, in ways that your past self couldn't or wouldn't. Every time you choose growth over comfort, you're casting a vote for the person you're becoming. Enough votes, and the election is won.

This is why people who commit to personal-benchmark thinking often describe a kind of quiet confidence that external validation can't produce. They're not waiting for someone to tell them they're good enough. They already know they're better than they were. The scoreboard is internal, and they're winning.

Dealing With Bad Days: What Happens When Yesterday Was Actually Pretty Great

Okay, let's address the elephant in the room. What about the days when you genuinely can't top yesterday? What happens when you're sick, exhausted, grieving, burnt out, or just having one of those days where getting out of bed feels like climbing Everest in flip-flops?

This is where the philosophy gets its real depth. "Better than yesterday" doesn't always mean doing more. Sometimes it means resting intentionally instead of collapsing from exhaustion. Sometimes it means asking for help instead of white-knuckling through alone. Sometimes it means simply not quitting, which, on the hardest days, is its own form of victory.

Compassion is part of this equation, and it's non-negotiable. Self-improvement without self-compassion isn't growth — it's punishment. You can hold high standards for yourself and give yourself grace on the hard days. Those two things aren't in conflict. In fact, research consistently shows that self-compassion is one of the strongest predictors of resilience and long-term achievement. People who are kind to themselves when they stumble get back up faster and go further.

So on the days when yesterday's you were crushing it and today's you're barely functional? That's okay. The goal isn't perfection. The goal is direction. And even a day spent resting deliberately, healing consciously, or simply surviving with dignity is a day pointed in the right direction.

Practical Ways to Start Competing With Yourself (Starting Today)

Alright, enough philosophy — let's get practical. Because all the inspiration in the world is worthless without application. Here's how you actually do this:

Keep a simple daily reflection journal. You don't need a fancy leather-bound notebook or a 47-step journaling protocol. Just ask yourself three questions at the end of each day:

What did I do well today?

What could I have done better?

What will I do differently tomorrow?

Three questions, five minutes, massive long-term impact.

Track your own metrics, not someone else's. Whether it's fitness, finances, relationships, or creative work — measure your progress against your personal baseline. Your mile time compared to your mile time last month. Your savings rate compared to your savings rate last year. External benchmarks can inform you; internal benchmarks should guide you.

Celebrate micro-wins. We're embarrassingly bad at this as a culture. We wait for the big moment — the promotion, the finish line, the number on the scale — and completely ignore the dozens of small victories that made it possible. Start acknowledging the little wins. You showed up when you didn't want to? Win. You handled a stressful situation more calmly than you used to? Win. You chose growth over comfort for the fifteenth day in a row? Massive win. Celebrating progress reinforces the behaviors that create more progress.

Find an accountability partner who gets it. Not someone who'll compete with you, but someone who'll cheer you on against your own past self. The right accountability partner asks "are you better than you were last month?" not "are you better than me?" That distinction is everything.

Review your past self regularly. Look at old journal entries, photos, emails, work you did a year or two ago. This isn't nostalgia — it's evidence. Evidence that you've grown, changed, learned, and improved in ways you might not notice day to day. Seeing your own evolution in black and white is one of the most powerfully motivating experiences available to any human being.

The Ripple Effect: How Personal Growth Affects Everyone Around You

Here's something nobody talks about enough — when you commit to being better than your past self, it doesn't just affect you. It ripples outward in ways you can't fully anticipate.

A parent who works on their emotional regulation becomes a safer, calmer presence for their children. A leader who commits to humility and continuous learning creates a culture where their team feels safe to grow, too. A friend who does the hard work of becoming more honest, more present, more empathetic — that friend makes every relationship they're in better.

This is why self-improvement, done with the right intention, is actually one of the most generous things you can do. It's not selfish to grow. It's not navel-gazing to invest in yourself. When you become a better version of yourself, the people in your life get a better version of you. And that matters.

The comparison mindset, on the other hand, breeds resentment, jealousy, and a zero-sum mentality where someone else's success feels like your loss. The personal-benchmark mindset breeds abundance — the recognition that there's enough room for everyone to grow, that your wins don't diminish anyone else's, and that a rising tide really can lift all boats.

Why This Philosophy Is Harder Than It Sounds (And Why That's the Point)

Let's not sugarcoat it — genuinely committing to beating your past self is harder than it sounds. It requires honesty. Raw, sometimes uncomfortable honesty about where you actually are versus where you want to be. It requires consistency, which is boring and unglamorous and doesn't get many Instagram likes. And it requires patience in a world that's addicted to instant gratification.

It's much easier, in a weird way, to chase external validation. At least when you're measuring yourself against others, the goalposts are constantly moving — which means you always have an excuse for why you haven't arrived yet. But when your only benchmark is yourself? There's nowhere to hide. You know whether you're growing or not. You can feel it.

That accountability can be uncomfortable. But it's also, ultimately, liberating. Because when you stop outsourcing your self-worth to other people's achievements, you take back complete ownership of your own narrative. You stop being a supporting character in someone else's story and start being the main character in your own.

And that, more than any motivational poster or Instagram quote, is what actually changes a life.

Conclusion: The Most Important Race You'll Ever Run Is Against Yourself

At the end of the day — or rather, at the beginning of every new day — there's one question that cuts through all the noise, all the comparison, all the social media posturing and highlight reels and keeping-up-with-the-Joneses nonsense. That question is simply this: Am I better today than I was yesterday?

Not better than your neighbor. Not better than your colleague who just got promoted. Not better than the person whose life looks perfect from the outside but horrible on the inside. Just better than the version of you that existed 24 hours ago. Even by a fraction. Even just in intention. Even just in awareness.

That's the race worth running. It has no finish line, which means it never gets stale. It has no losers, because your only opponent is your own potential. And it has no ceiling, because human beings are remarkably, stubbornly, beautifully capable of growth at any age, in any circumstance, from any starting point.

So go ahead — compete. Compete ferociously, even. But compete against the right opponent. Be better than the person you were yesterday, and trust that doing that consistently, humbly, and honestly is enough in some way. In fact, it's everything.

The Greatest Glory in Life, Lies in Rising Every Time We Fall

LM EdwardTuesday, December 31, 2024 No comments

The Greatest Glory in Living Lies Not in Never Falling, But in Rising Every Time We Fall

Why Nelson Mandela's Most Famous Quote Is Still the Most Powerful Thing You'll Read Today

Let's be real for a second. We've all seen those motivational posters hanging in dentist waiting rooms — the ones with a soaring eagle and some vague caption about "believing in yourself." They're about as inspiring as watching paint dry on a Tuesday afternoon. But every now and then, a quote comes along that genuinely stops you in your tracks, makes you put down your coffee, and think, "Wait. That's actually profound."

Nelson Mandela's timeless words — "The greatest glory in living lies not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall" — are exactly that kind of quote. Not the eagle-poster kind. The real kind. The kind that sticks to your ribs like a good meal and refuses to leave your brain for days.

This isn't just a catchy line somebody slapped onto a sunset photo. It's a philosophy. A blueprint. A way of looking at life that completely flips the script on what success is supposed to look like. So buckle up, because we're about to dig deep into one of the most meaningful ideas ever put into words — and we're going to have some fun doing it.

What Does the Quote Actually Mean? (No, Really.)

Before we go all philosophical and start waxing poetic, let's break this down like we're explaining it to a friend over coffee.

The quote is fundamentally saying this: glory — real, genuine, soul-deep glory — doesn't come from having a perfect, failure-free life. It comes from getting knocked flat on your face and choosing, every single time, to get back up.

Now, that sounds simple enough. But sit with it for a minute. Because what Mandela is really challenging is one of the most deeply held assumptions in modern culture: that success is about avoiding failure. We're taught from an early age to get it right. Don't make mistakes. Don't embarrass yourself. Don't fall.

But here's the thing — life doesn't care about your plan. Life is going to trip you up whether you're ready or not. The question is never if you'll fall. It's always what you do after.

The quote redefines success entirely. It shifts the trophy from the person who never stumbled to the person who stumbled a hundred times and kept going anyway. And honestly? That's a much more interesting person to root for.

The History Behind the Words: Mandela's Falls Were Literal

It'd be easy to dismiss this quote if it came from someone who'd lived a comfortable, challenge-free life. But Nelson Mandela didn't just talk about falling and rising — he lived it in one of the most extraordinary ways any human being ever has.

Mandela spent 27 years in prison. Twenty-seven years. For context, that's longer than many people's entire adult working lives. He was imprisoned for fighting against apartheid, a system of racial segregation so brutal and unjust that the rest of the world eventually looked on in collective horror.

Most people, faced with that kind of fall — that kind of devastating, crushing, identity-stripping collapse — would break. And who could blame them? But Mandela didn't just survive his imprisonment. He emerged from it with his convictions intact, his humor reportedly still sharp, and a vision for a better South Africa burning brighter than ever.

He went from prisoner to president. That's not a metaphor. That's the world's history.

When Mandela talks about rising every time we fall, he's not speaking theoretically. He's speaking from the kind of lived experience that most of us will never fully comprehend. And that's exactly why the quote carries so much weight. It didn't come from a motivational speaker with a podcast and a Patreon crowdfunding account. It came from a man who suffered immeasurably and still chose — again and again — to rise.

Why We're So Terrified of Falling (And Why That Fear Is Holding Us Back)

Here's an uncomfortable truth: most of us are more afraid of failure than we are excited about success. We dress it up in different clothes — we call it "being realistic," or "managing expectations," or "playing it safe" — but underneath all of that, it's just fear.

And fear of failure is extraordinarily sneaky. It doesn't always show up as paralysis. Sometimes it shows up as perfectionism. You don't start the business because you haven't figured out every detail yet. You don't write the book because what if it's not good enough? You don't apply for the job because what if you don't get it?

Meanwhile, life ticks by. And the thing you were afraid of failing at remains undone.

Psychologists call this "fear of failure" or atychiphobia in its clinical form, and it's remarkably common. Studies have shown that fear of failure can be more motivationally paralyzing than fear of pain. Think about that. Some people would rather hurt than fail. That's how deeply we've internalized the idea that falling is shameful.

Mandela's quote is a direct antidote to this kind of thinking. It doesn't pretend that falling doesn't hurt. It doesn't minimize the embarrassment, the loss, the sting of a dream that didn't work out. Instead, it says: all of that is okay, as long as you get up. The fall doesn't define you. The rising does.

The Science of Resilience: Why Rising Again Is Actually Good for Your Brain

Now let's get a little nerdy, because it turns out that resilience — the psychological ability to bounce back from adversity — is one of the most well-studied traits in all of human psychology, and the research is genuinely fascinating.

For a long time, scientists thought resilience was a fixed trait. You either had it or you didn't. Some people were just born tougher, and the rest of us were destined to crumble under pressure. Comforting, right? Not even a little.

But more recent research has completely overturned that assumption. Resilience is a skill. It can be learned, practiced, and strengthened — just like a muscle. And the more you exercise it (i.e., the more times you fall and choose to get up), the better you get at it.

Dr. Martin Seligman, the founder of positive psychology, spent decades studying what makes people bounce back from adversity. His research found that resilient people share certain cognitive habits: they tend to see setbacks as temporary rather than permanent, specific rather than universal, and external rather than entirely self-caused. In other words, instead of thinking "I failed because I'm a failure and everything is ruined forever," they think, "That didn't work. Let me figure out why and try differently."

That's it. That's the whole game. The story you tell yourself about your failure determines whether you rise or stay down.

And here's the kicker — every time you practice rising, you literally rewire your brain. Neuroplasticity means that the neural pathways associated with resilience become stronger and more automatic the more you use them. Falling and rising isn't just philosophically good for you. It's neurologically good for you.

Real-World Examples of People Who Rose (and Kept Rising)

Let's take a quick tour through history and recent times to look at some people who clearly read the Mandela playbook — even if they'd never heard the quote.

J.K. Rowling was a single mother on welfare, clinically depressed, and had her Harry Potter manuscript rejected by twelve different publishers. Twelve. That's not a stumble. That's a faceplant into gravel. Today, she's one of the best-selling authors in human history. In 2004, Forbes magazine named J.K. Rowling "the first billion-dollar author". The fall didn't stop the story. It was part of it.

Thomas Edison famously failed thousands of times before inventing the lightbulb. When a reporter asked him how it felt to fail so many times, he reportedly said he hadn't failed — he'd just found ten thousand ways that didn't work. That's either genuine genius or the world's most impressive spin, but either way, the man kept rising.

Oprah Winfrey was fired from her first television job as a news anchor and told she wasn't fit for TV. We'll pause here for the irony to fully sink in. She went on to build one of the most powerful media empires in the world. Globally, she is the richest Black woman and the wealthiest female celebrity. Dubbed the "Queen of All Media", she was the richest African-American of the 20th century and was once the world's only Black billionaire. By 2007, she was often ranked as the most influential woman in the world.

Steve Jobs was actually fired from the company he founded. Pushed out of Apple — his own baby — in what must have been a humiliating, ground-shaking fall. He came back, rebuilt, and under his second tenure gave the world the iMac, iPod, iPhone, and iPad. Not a bad second act.

What do all of these people have in common? They fell — publicly, sometimes spectacularly — and they got back up. Not because they weren't hurt by the fall, but because they refused to let it be the end of their story.

How to Actually Rise: Practical Wisdom for the Real World

Okay, so we've established that rising is good, resilience is learnable, and history's greatest achievers all have a solid falling-and-rising track record. But what does rising actually look like in practice? Because "just get back up" is great advice in theory, but a little thin on specifics.

Here's how to actually do it.

First, let yourself feel the fall. This sounds counterintuitive, but trying to immediately bounce back without processing what happened is like putting a bandage over a wound you haven't cleaned. You need to feel the disappointment, the frustration, the grief — whatever it is — before you can move through it. Suppressing those emotions doesn't make you stronger. It just means they'll ambush you later.

Second, get brutally honest about what went wrong. Not in a self-flagellating, "I'm the worst person alive" way, but in a clear-eyed, practical way. What didn't work? What could you have done differently? What was outside your control? This is the debrief stage, and it's where you extract the actual lessons from the experience instead of just suffering through it pointlessly.

Third, reframe the narrative. This is where Mandela's quote becomes your mental wallpaper. You are not someone who failed. You are someone who tried, encountered an obstacle, and is now smarter, tougher, and more experienced than you were before. That's genuinely true, by the way — not just motivational fluff.

Fourth, take one small step. Rising doesn't mean immediately soaring. Sometimes it just means standing up. Taking one small, concrete action in the direction you want to go. The momentum builds from there.

Fifth, surround yourself with people who believe in rising. Energy is contagious — both the good kind and the bad kind. People who catastrophize every setback will make your falls feel bigger and your rises feel harder. People who've fallen and risen themselves will remind you that it's possible.

The Connection Between Falling and Growth: You Can't Have One Without the Other

Here's something nobody tells you when you're young and terrified of failure: falling is not the opposite of growth. It's the engine of growth.

Think about literally anything you've ever gotten good at. Did you learn to ride a bike without falling off? Did you learn to cook without burning something? Did you learn to have healthy relationships without messing a few of them up along the way? Of course not. Mastery comes from practice, and practice involves getting things wrong before you get them right.

The Japanese have a concept called "kintsugi" — the art of repairing broken pottery with gold. The idea is that the cracks, filled with gold, make the piece more beautiful and more valuable than it was before it broke. The breakage is not hidden. It's celebrated as part of the object's history and character.

That's what Mandela's quote is really pointing toward. Your falls, your failures, your cracks — they don't diminish your value. Properly processed and integrated, they add to it. They're the gold in the pottery. They're the depth behind the eyes of someone who's really lived.

People who've never fallen often have a certain brittleness to them — a fragility that comes from never having been tested. They can be shattered by the first real adversity they face because they've never built the muscle. The people who've fallen and risen? They have a groundedness, a steadiness, that can't be faked and can't be bought. It can only be earned through the exact process Mandela describes.

Falling in the Age of Social Media: The Extra Complication Nobody Asked For

Now let's talk about the particular challenge of falling in 2024 and beyond, because we have an extra complication that Mandela didn't have to contend with: we fall in public now.

Social media has created a world where people curate highlight reels of their best moments and post them for the world to see, like, and validate. And when you're watching everyone else's curated perfection, your own messy, imperfect reality can feel like a catastrophic failure by comparison.

The comparison trap is real, it's relentless, and it's spectacularly unhealthy. Research consistently shows that heavy social media use correlates with increased anxiety, depression, and — you guessed it — fear of failure. Because when falling feels like it happens in front of an audience, the stakes feel much higher.

But here's the thing: everyone is falling. The people with the perfect Instagram feeds are falling too. They're just not posting about it. Behind the polished photos and the carefully crafted captions, there are failed businesses, broken relationships, abandoned dreams, and 3 a.m. moments of existential doubt. The falls are happening. They're just invisible.

Mandela's quote is a powerful corrective to the social media illusion. The greatest glory doesn't come from performing a perfect life. It comes from living a real one — complete with its stumbles, its setbacks, and its sometimes ungainly, imperfect attempts to rise.

Teaching the Next Generation to Rise

One of the most important applications of this philosophy is in how we raise and educate children. If we want the next generation to be resilient, we need to stop trying to protect them from every fall.

There's a phenomenon that child psychologists have observed in overly protective parenting — sometimes called "helicopter parenting" — where children are shielded from so many natural consequences and disappointments that they never develop the emotional toolkit to handle adversity. Then, when the real world hits them (and it will), they have no idea what to do to overcome it.

The greatest gift you can give a child is not a fall-free life. It's the confidence that they can survive a fall. That means letting them fail sometimes. Letting them feel the disappointment of not making the team, or not getting the grade, or losing the game — and then helping them process it, learn from it, and try again.

This doesn't mean being indifferent to a child's struggles. It means being present and supportive during the rising, rather than trying to prevent every fall. Teaching kids that failure is survivable — even instructive — might be the most important lesson any parent or educator can impart.

The Spiritual Dimension: Falling and Rising Across Traditions

It's worth noting that Mandela's insight isn't unique to him or to modern philosophy. The idea that meaning and glory come through struggle rather than ease is one of the most universal themes in human spiritual and religious thought.

Christianity speaks of death and resurrection, of the grain of wheat that must fall into the ground and "die" before it can bear fruit. Buddhism teaches that suffering is inherent to existence, and that wisdom and liberation come through working with that suffering rather than running from it. Stoic philosophy — increasingly popular today — holds that adversity is not the enemy of a good life but one of its essential ingredients.

Joseph Campbell's concept of "the hero's journey" — which underlies virtually every compelling narrative humans have ever told — is built entirely around this idea. The hero doesn't achieve glory by avoiding the dark forest. The hero achieves glory by entering it, facing the monster, and emerging transformed. The fall — the descent, the trial, the darkness — is not an interruption of the hero's story. It IS the story.

Mandela's quote, in six words, captures something that storytellers, theologians, and philosophers have been circling around for millennia: the rising is what makes us.

Conclusion: Your Falls Are Not the End of Your Story

Here's where we land, and let's make it count.

The greatest glory in living lies not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall. These aren't just beautiful words. They're an instruction manual for a meaningful life. It insists that - failure is not final.

You're going to fall. Maybe you already have — recently, badly, in ways that still sting when you think about them too long. Maybe you're in the middle of a fall right now, wondering if you'll ever find your footing again. That's okay. That's not the end. That's actually, believe it or not, part of the glory.

The glory isn't reserved for people who had it easy. It's not for the ones who were never tested, never doubted, never lay awake wondering if they'd made a terrible mistake. The glory — the real, hard-won, soul-deep kind — belongs to the ones who fell and got up. Fell and got up. Fell and, even when every bone in their body screamed to stay down, got up one more time.

That's the story worth telling. That's the life worth living. And that's the kind of human being the world genuinely needs more of.

So go ahead. Fall if you need to. Just make sure you rise again.

The Best Time to Plant a Tree Was 20 Years Ago....

LM EdwardSaturday, June 01, 2024 No comments

The Best Time to Plant a Tree Was 20 Years Ago. The Second Best Time Is Now.

There's an old Chinese proverb that's been floating around motivational posters, LinkedIn feeds, and the walls of every life coach's office since the dawn of time: "The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now." You've probably seen it so many times that it's started to feel like wallpaper — decorative, familiar, and easy to ignore. But here's the thing: just because something shows up on a motivational calendar doesn't mean it's wrong. In fact, this particular nugget of wisdom might be one of the most quietly profound pieces of advice ever condensed into a single sentence.

So let's dig into it — literally and figuratively — and figure out why this proverb hits differently than your average fortune cookie wisdom, and why it might just be the mental reset you didn't know you needed.

What the Heck Does Planting a Tree Have to Do with Your Life?

Let's start with the obvious question. Why a tree? Why not "the best time to bake a loaf of bread was 20 years ago"? The answer, it turns out, is beautifully intentional. Trees are one of the few things in the natural world that embody the concept of delayed gratification in a way even a five-year-old can understand. You plant a tiny seed, you water it, you tend it, and then — after years of patient effort — you get shade, fruit, oxygen, and a place to hang a tire swing. Nobody plants an oak tree expecting to sit under it next Thursday.

That's the first layer of the proverb's genius. It's not really about horticulture. It's about anything in your life that requires long-term investment before it yields a return. A savings account. A skill you've been meaning to learn. A business idea you've been scribbling in notebooks for three years. A relationship you've been meaning to nurture. All of these are trees. And all of them would be further along right now if you'd started 20 years ago.

But you didn't. And that's okay. Which brings us to the second half.

The Art of Not Beating Yourself Up Over the Past

Here's where most people get stuck: they hear the first part of the proverb — "the best time was 20 years ago" — and their brain immediately sprints off into a guilt spiral. "I should've started investing when I was 25." "I should've learned Spanish back in college." "I should've called my dad more often." The "shoulda-coulda-woulda" parade shows up, uninvited, with a full brass band.

But the proverb doesn't stop there, and that's the whole point. It doesn't say, "the best time was 20 years ago, so you've missed your shot, good luck, goodbye." It pivots. It course-corrects. It looks you dead in the eyes and says: the second best time is now. Not tomorrow. Not after you've finished your coffee or reorganized your desk drawers or had one more scroll through Instagram. Now.

The wisdom here is a two-punch combo. The first punch acknowledges the reality of missed time — yes, you could've started earlier, and yes, earlier starts generally yield better results. The second punch refuses to let that acknowledgment become an excuse for continued inaction. Because here's the brutal truth: the same logic that says "I should've started 20 years ago" will be true 20 years from now about today. Future-you is going to look back at this exact moment and think, "I really wish I'd started back then."

Well, "back then" is happening right now. This is it.

Why Human Brains Are Terrible at Starting Things (And What to Do About It)

Let's be real — we're all spectacularly bad at beginning things we know are good for us. There's actually a name for this in behavioral psychology: present bias. Our brains are wired to overvalue immediate rewards and undervalue future ones. The future version of you — the one who would benefit from the tree you plant today — feels abstract, distant, almost like a stranger. Your current self, on the other hand, is very much here, very much tired, and very much aware that starting something new is uncomfortable.

This is why gyms are packed in January and empty by March. It's why retirement accounts go unfunded despite people knowing, intellectually, that compound interest is basically magic. It's why novels sit half-written in laptop folders with names like "FINAL_DRAFT_v2_ACTUAL_FINAL.docx." Starting requires overcoming the gravitational pull of the present moment, and that pull is strong.

The proverb cuts through all of this psychological noise with elegant simplicity. It doesn't ask you to solve present bias. It doesn't ask you to become a different kind of person. It just asks you to do one thing: start now. Because starting now, even imperfectly, even late, even with trembling hands and zero confidence, will always beat not starting at all.

The Mathematics of "Better Late Than Never" — And Why the Numbers Are On Your Side

Let's talk about something concrete for a second, because sometimes wisdom lands harder when it's backed by math. Take compound interest — the financial world's version of a growing tree. If you invest $5,000 at age 25 and let it grow at an average 7% annual return, by age 65 you'll have roughly $75,000 from that single investment. Not bad.

But what if you didn't invest at 25? What if you're 45 and you're reading this right now and thinking, "Great, I've missed 20 years of compound growth, this proverb is taunting me"? Here's the thing: if you invest $5,000 today at 45, you'll still have around $19,000 by age 65. That's not $75,000, sure — but it's a whole lot better than zero. And if you invest regularly from here on out? The numbers start looking much friendlier.

The same logic applies to learning a new language, which neuroscientists confirm is easier the younger you start — but absolutely possible at any age. It applies to starting a business, where data consistently shows that the average successful entrepreneur is in their early 40s, not their 20s. It applies to physical fitness, where the human body responds to training stimulus at virtually any age. The starting point matters, but it's far from the only thing that matters. Consistency from whenever you begin is the real game.

Real People Who Started Their Trees Late (And Watched Them Grow Tall)

Nothing makes a principle feel more real than seeing it in actual human beings, so let's take a quick tour through history's most satisfying "it's never too late" stories.

Vera Wang didn't design her first wedding dress until she was 40. Before that, she was a figure skater and a fashion editor. Today, she's one of the most recognized names in bridal fashion worldwide. Her tree? Planted at 40.

Colonel Harland Sanders — yes, the KFC guy with the white suit — was 62 years old when he started franchising his fried chicken recipe. He'd spent decades running a gas station with a restaurant attached, and it wasn't until he was well past what most people consider "prime working years" that he built one of the most recognizable fast food empires on earth. His tree? Planted at 62.

Julia Child didn't publish her landmark cookbook until she was 49. She didn't even learn to cook professionally until her late 30s. Her tree? Planted firmly in middle age, and it grew tall enough to change American food culture.

These aren't feel-good anomalies. They're evidence of a fundamental truth: the best trees don't always start from the earliest seeds. Sometimes they start from the most determined ones.

How This Proverb Applies to Every Single Area of Your Life

Part of what makes this saying so sticky is its remarkable versatility. It's not domain-specific. It doesn't apply only to finance, or only to career, or only to personal development. It applies to everything, and that universality is part of what makes it so powerful.

Health and fitness? The best time to start exercising was when you were young with a metabolism like a furnace. The second best time is now — because even modest physical activity dramatically reduces risk of heart disease, cognitive decline, and about a dozen other things your doctor will eventually bring up.

Relationships? The best time to invest in friendships, to call your parents more often, to tell the people you love that you love them — well, some of those windows have already closed. But most of them haven't. The second-best time is now.

Creative pursuits? The novel, the painting, the podcast, the YouTube channel, the pottery hobby — all of it would be further along if you'd started years ago. But none of it can be started until you start it, and starting is something you can do today.

Mental health? Therapy, meditation, journaling, whatever tools resonate with you — these would have helped Past You, too. But Present You still gets to benefit. The second-best time is now.

Learning? The world's knowledge has never been more accessible. Languages, instruments, coding, cooking, philosophy — you can learn virtually anything with a decent internet connection and the willingness to feel like a beginner for a while. The second-best time is now.

The Hidden Message: Perfectionism Is the Enemy of the Planted Tree

Here's something the proverb doesn't say explicitly but absolutely implies: stop waiting for perfect conditions. One of the primary reasons people don't start things isn't laziness — it's perfectionism dressed up as preparation. "I'll start my business when I have more capital." "I'll start eating healthier after the holidays." "I'll write that book when life calms down a little."

Life doesn't calm down. There is no perfect moment. The soil is never going to be exactly the right temperature, the sunlight never perfectly calibrated, the rain never ideally timed. And yet trees grow anyway, because the seed doesn't wait for permission to become a tree.

Starting something imperfectly, in imperfect conditions, with an imperfect plan, is not a compromise — it's the actual method. Every single tree that exists started as a tiny, fragile thing that had no business surviving. And yet here we are, living in a world full of forests.

The proverb is also, subtly, an argument against comparison paralysis — that particular kind of misery that comes from looking at someone who started their journey earlier than you and concluding that you can never catch up. You're not racing them. You're planting your own tree. It doesn't matter that their tree is taller right now. What matters is whether you're going to plant yours today.

Making It Practical: How to Actually Start Planting Your Tree Today

Enough philosophy. Let's get practical. If you're convinced — and you should be — that now is the time to begin whatever you've been putting off, here's how you actually do it without overthinking yourself into another year of inaction.

Start embarrassingly small. Don't decide to "get healthy" — decide to take a 10-minute walk today. Don't decide to "learn Spanish" — download an app and do one lesson. Don't decide to "save more money" — automate a transfer of whatever amount feels laughably low. The point isn't the size of the action. The point is breaking inertia. A seed doesn't need much to get started — just a crack in the soil and a little water.

Tell someone. Social accountability is one of the most underrated tools for behavior change. When you tell another person, "I'm going to start doing X," your brain treats this differently than a private commitment. You've now got a social contract, and humans are wired to honor those. Plant your tree in front of a witness.

Measure progress, not perfection. Keep track of the fact that you showed up, not whether you performed perfectly. A tree doesn't measure its growth against the tallest tree in the forest. It just grows, millimeter by millimeter, day by day.

Expect the awkward early phase. Every skill, habit, or endeavor has a period where you're terrible at it, and progress feels invisible. This is the part where most people quit, mistaking the natural growing pains of a seedling for evidence that nothing is happening. Something is always happening. Growth is rarely visible in real time.

Return to it when you fail. You will miss days. You will fall off the wagon. You will forget, get distracted, get busy, and get discouraged. None of that means the tree is dead. It means you need to water it again - consistently. The only way a tree truly dies is if you stop planting entirely.

Why This Proverb Belongs in Your Daily Mental Toolkit

We live in a culture that's obsessed with optimization — with finding the fastest route, the best hack, the most efficient shortcut. And that's not entirely wrong; efficiency has its place. But some things simply can't be optimized around time. A tree takes years to grow. A skill needs hours to develop. A relationship needs consistency to deepen. A life worth living needs to be lived, day after day, even when it's unglamorous and slow and nothing seems to be happening.

The proverb "the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago; the second best time is now" is a daily reminder that you are always at the beginning of something. It doesn't matter how old you are, how many times you've tried and quit, how many years you feel like you've wasted. Right now, in this exact moment, you have access to the second-best time to start anything you care about.

That's not a small thing. That's actually enormous.

Conclusion: Go Plant Your Tree Today

So here we are. You've read through the philosophy, the psychology, the math, the historical examples, and the practical steps. You know why the proverb works. You know what it's really saying. You know that the guilt trip about 20 years ago isn't the point — the point is the gentle, firm, urgently kind insistence that now is when you act.

The only question left is what your tree is. What's the thing you've been meaning to start, the habit you've been meaning to build, the version of yourself you've been meaning to grow into? Whatever it is, the proverb's logic applies without exception. You could've started earlier. You didn't. That's fine. That's human. That's all of us.

But today is a different story. Today, you have a choice. And the most interesting, most life-altering, most profoundly hopeful thing about being alive right now is that today always is now. Not someday. Not eventually. Not when conditions improve, and the stars align, and you finally feel ready.

Now.

Go plant your tree right now!