Words and Excerpts from Mr. Donté Ledbetter

Written on April 4, 2016 | "Monday Musings, 4: The Key to a Better Life"

One day last week after work, I sat in my room and thought about life. For some reason, that day I felt empty. Not sad or depressed, just empty (maybe I was tired). When I think about life, I tend to think about its purpose. Why am I living? Why was I born? What am I supposed to be doing at my age? Then it dawned on me that each person's purpose is unique, and there are many things that exist that can help us enrich our lives.

The key to creating a more rewarding life is to develop a web of people, things, and activities that you deeply care about. As you get older, your web should expand until your last breath. To develop the web throughout your life, you have to venture out into unknown waters. Try new things, meet new people, and explore places that seem scary. The key findings in your journey are the strings of your web. The core of your web is your existence, your deeply ingrained personality traits, and the experiences and people that have molded you from birth. But as you move through your life, don't get too comfortable, as the mold of who you are will always change.

Written on July 25, 2016 | "Monday Musings, 20: Why I Think in the Present and Future, Not the Past"

One of my mentors once gave me very simple advice one day. He said, "We can't worry about what we can't control." You can put many things under the umbrella of "things we can't control" as humans (e.g., the weather). On an individual level, there are many things that are out of my hands, and the past is one of them. The past is good for learning from mistakes and successes but not much else. When I dwell on the past, I lose touch with the present and future, things I can control. Dwelling on the past hinders my growth as a person and prevents me from improving and building on a past decision.

Written on April 22, 2018 | "Memento Mori"

I've recently begun adopting the principles of Stoicism, and one popular Stoic phrase is "Memento Mori", which basically means "Remember you must die." Thinking about your own death and mortality may seem morbid but it's necessary. We must live as if tomorrow is not promised because it's not. We all know death will happen to us eventually, so why wait for anything? Why take anything for granted? The inevitability of death should humble us, and then motivate us to take full advantage of life as soon as we can.