Daniel Coyle

It's not a game.

It's a garden is what he was saying that I heard, right?

And it's not a game to win.

It's a garden you grow.

And that's what it really knocked me for a loop a bit and sent me on this journey that has me standing in front of you now that resulted in this book.

I couldn't agree more.

I think it's deeply true.

We're really taught that life is this sort of giant machine.

And machines are great for certain things.

They're good at being predictable, and they create measurable outcomes, and they give you results.

But in the final analysis, that's an illusion.

Life is, parts of life are a machine.

There's definitely parts of life.

If I wanna get my meals prepped for the week, that's a machine-like activity in some ways, right?

I need to get from A to B to C to D. But there's a whole nother world that opens up when you start seeing it as a garden, when you start seeing it as moments, because gardens don't work like games do.

Gardens don't work like machines do.

Gardens depend on, you have to clear a space and you have to cultivate things, which means these small moments of nurture.

That you're not like doing, following some script.

It's where you're noticing some need and then responding to that need in real time in ways that create something bigger, like a relationship, right?

And relationships aren't games and relationships aren't machines.