"There will be weather." One of my favorite quotes from Bill Beaster, my one-time middle school industrial arts teacher, basketball teammate, now friend, was his retort to a comment questioning whether he really wanted to bike since it was supposed to rain for his weekend bike ride. Everyone knows that we can't change the weather, but Bill has an understanding about the weather. By being proactive, he also can overcome non-ideal conditions to still have fun.
The key in our everyday lives is to understand the things we can change and the things we cannot change based on effort. Bill Burnett and David Evans call those things effort can't change gravity problems (Burnett and Evans). Bill Beaster didn't succumb to the idea that it was going to rain and change his plans, he overcame the weather by putting on rain gear--pretty simple.
Seth Godin gives us a graphic way of looking at the problem in his Quadrants of Discernment (Godin 2010, 181) . The x axis is passion and the y axis is attachment. We want to live in the upper right corner of discernment and passion, where we are choosing the types of problems or projects that our passion and effort can change, ones that make us a linchpin. The bottom left quadrant is where the passive person who feels they cannot create change lives. They are the whiners.
Burnett, William, and David J. Evans. Designing Your Life: Build a Life That Works for You. Vintage Books, 2018.
Godin, Seth. Linchpin: Are You Indispensable? Portfolio, 2010.
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