I write 1-minute insights daily. Below are my latest. Like? Enter your email to get updates.
I help busy people do inner work.
I write 1-minute insights daily. Below are my latest. Like? Enter your email to get updates.
The relationship you have today will not be the relationship you have tomorrow.
Not with your spouse, your girlfriend/boyfriend, your parents, your siblings, or yourself.
Relationships change as quickly as your social media feed.
And like your social media feed… what direction your feed goes depends entirely on how you interact with your feed today.
…Not in how you intend to interact with your feed or how you plan to, hope to, or want to interact with your feed… but in how you actually interact with it.
Invest in better content, connect with better people, better utilize block/mute/unfollow… grow. Do the opposite… regress.
Invest in better experiences with people, take more initiative in surrounding yourself with better influences, better enforce your boundaries and prioritize your mental health… grow. Do the opposite… regress.
Nothing ever stays the same. Remember this as you’re deciding how you want to actually act today.
When I think about learning piano… it feels daunting.
Like… there are so… many… keys…
But, then I remembered how good I am at typing.
…And how much smaller a key is on a keyboard vs a key on a piano.
…And it came back to me how I once felt daunted at the prospect of learning how to type without looking and with more than two fingers.
…And I realized that, today, I can type lightning fast, without looking, and with all of my fingers.
This is what people mean when they say perspective changes everything.
In the snap of my fingers I went from a feeling of hopelessness about learning something new to a self-confidence that’s not fluff based… but evidence based… that stands up against the tests and challenges of my ego as it tries to keep me confined within my comfort zone.
…And it really can happen that fast.
Inner work prompt: …What’s something that feels daunting to you in your life right now? Are there any evidence based experiences or scenarios that you can reference that might change your perspective on that?
When I lift weights… time crawls.
When I train martial arts or play a sport… time flies.
Some people will tell you to only do the things that make time fly.
…After all, why suffer your way through exercise, for example, when you could be getting it in in a fun way?
And while there’s absolutely nothing wrong with choosing the fun route… there is something to be said about learning how to discipline yourself to endure the type of temporary suffering that leads to lasting benefits/rewards, too.
Because once you can learn to do it for, again, weight lifting as an example… not only will you be hardening your body… but, you’ll be hardening your mind.
And a hardened mind isn’t only useful for lifting weights…
It’s one of the most useful tools for every single other endeavor you ever come across in life.
I’m learning how to DJ.
It started with an admiration… turned into a curiosity… lead me down many rabbit holes… resulted in several purchases… and has evolved into a new creative outlet.
Being a complete beginner in something again reminds me of the importance of balancing theory with experimentation.
Before I made any purchases and when I was going deep down YouTube rabbit holes, I felt like I was understanding pretty well what I was watching.
…Like I could do pretty easily what I was watching people—who made it look easy—do.
…And then I got a DJ controller and realized I didn’t have a clue.
It’s one thing to watch and learn passively from the comfort of your couch while you stare at a screen.
…It’s a whole ‘nother thing to experiment and learn actively from the uncomfortable position of trying and failing and having to dust yourself off and try again.
Here’s the thing though: we learn best with a solid balance of both.
All passive learning and no active experimentation leads to “book smarts” and no “street smarts.”
All active experimentation and no passive learning leads to “street smarts” and no “book smarts.”
The people who uncover the most of their potential in any learning domain in life are the ones who do both—and prioritize time, energy, and effort to both well.
P.s. ICYMI you can read the best of what I posted to MoveMe Quotes last week here.
If you look at motivation as something that happens to you… something you wait for to arrive… something like lightning that strikes when it strikes…
…Then you’re going to live with so much unrealized potential.
Motivation isn’t something you should expect to happen to you anymore than you should expect a charge to happen to your phone.
Wait for lightning to strike a charge into your phone and you’re going to live with a dead phone.
…Which is what so many of us are doing: living with dead potential.
And not because we don’t care… I think we all want to realize our potential… but, mostly because we don’t know how to activate and grow our potential.
The motivation required to do the things that help us realize our potential is something we make happen to ourselves… it’s something we actively seek out… it’s something that simply requires a (re)charge…
And rather than wait for motivation to strike:
…What else? What gets you charged up? How can you actively incorporate these ideas into your daily practice?
Stop waiting.
While eating out tonight, my waiter asked me towards the end of my meal if I had ever eaten at that restaurant before.
I told him I hadn’t.
He replied simply, “Well… you’re always welcome here.”
And what surprised me about this, I guess, is that not only did I feel like he really meant it… but he couldn’t have been any older than 17 years old.
…Obviously I’m welcome to come in and spend money at the for-profit business he works at.
But, you know… what most business owners don’t realize… is that us customers… we can sniff out whether you mean what you say or not pretty damn quickly.
And it’s the business “hack” that too many people ignore… genuinely caring.
When learning something new, don’t look at who has already mastered whatever it is you’re trying to learn that’s your age or younger…
…Look at who has mastered it that’s five or ten or twenty or even thirty years older than you.
Our ability to learn never dies.
Our decision that we’re “too old” or “too far behind” or “too late to the game” will, however, kill our ability to learn long before we ever die.
P.s. There is definitely somebody out there who’s doing the thing you’re interested in learning who started LONG after you did. Believe it (and stop making excuses).