Excellence is a habit

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

Aristotle

"You don’t set out to build a wall. You don't say ‘I’m going to build the biggest, baddest, greatest wall that’s ever been built.’ You don’t start there. You say, ‘I’m going to lay this brick as perfectly as a brick can be laid.’ You do that every single day. And soon you have a wall.”"
Will Smith

"It's the repetition of affirmations that leads to belief. And once that belief becomes a deep conviction, things begin to happen."

Muhammad Ali

Bricks and punches, habits and affirmations ... Excellence, great walls and super stars...

Not so difficult really, all we have to do is repeat whatever it is we want to accomplish or be everyday. Like yoga or playing harmonica, painting or learning a language, standing on one foot or standing on your head the limit is imagination not time. Like keeping positive, meditating, slowing down or being kinder ... 

The one thing I know is that not starting is the best way to run out of time!

Cheers

Jeanne

Notes on the weekly action challenge:

From last week: Where does our recycling go after the truck picks up our blue box?? And how much of it actually gets recycled/how efficient is the program?

The biggest obstacle and the largest cost of recycling is what we put in our blue bin and contaminated material. Putting material that does not belong in our recycling boxes means more time and energy sorting which results in higher costs to the municipality/taxpayer and can also jam up the automated separator systems. Everything to be recycled needs to be cleaned. Anything with food or food residue on it is contaminated and either cannot be used or results in lower quality end material. 

Pizza boxes and food contaminated cardboard and paper products cannot be recycled.

Most municipalities in Ontario have "single stream recycling". Everything recyclable goes into the blue bin (Compost is separate) and is taken to a transfer station where it is loaded onto different truck and taken to a Materials Recovery Facility. There it is sorted using a series of technologies to separate the materials, they are "baled" and sold to 'recyclers' who make new products from the recovered material. This article talks about the current state of Canada's recycling programs.

Reduce, reuse, recycle, rejected: Why Canada’s recycling industry is in crisis mode - The Globe and Mail

From first week: Look at energy use in my house and unplug things when they are not being used.

Now that I've unplugged most things electronics, stopped using google home, and turning off my devices that use wifi (except when I'm actually using them) I kinda wish I hadn't got rid of my cd collection (the hard drive I stored them on dropped and I'm not sure if I saved them in the clouds I'd really want to use that anyways) and I also am going to see about finding an old radio I can listen to CBC on. I understand that internet searches use energy, and I wonder what the comparison would be between the old plug in versions of music players and streaming?? 

It is getting more habitual to unplug and turn off in the evening. It is still weird thinking about it though after being connected 24/7 for so long. What if a catastrophe happened and I didn't find out until the morning? I'd probably deal with it better after a good sleep, and I will turn on if there is a chance of forest fires in the area. Maybe time to get a land line again??? I'm pondering still... 

Everything has an impact and I want to be clear on what I'm doing and why to make my impact a conscious one ... as much as I can

This week action from the recycling: See where I generate garbage/recycling, sort and clean and take the stack of old batteries and old electronics (sadly no radio) to a battery/electronic recycling place... and also look into ways to encourage companies to reduce packaging.