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.
What if you started believing that repetition didn’t exist?
Even in—especially in—the moments that seem to repeat themselves day-in and day-out.
Are you waking up again to the same alarm, at the same time, in the same way again? …Or is something different? …Have some things evolved? …Have some things regressed?
Are you seeing the same people at the same times and in the same ways again? …Or are they different? …Has your connection evolved? …Has it regressed?
Are you perceiving your world in the same ways at the same times and in the same ways? …Or it just because your perception is boring? …Or maybe it’s fatigued? …Or maybe it’s lazy?
The thing is: repetition doesn’t exist.
Life is always fresh.
We never step into the same river of reality twice. Both the river and us—the stepper—are constantly changing. Evolving. Regressing. Learning. Unlearning. Absorbing. Releasing. Crashing. Flowing…
The reality is we stop investing into the freshness of our perception so, of course, it goes bad. Spend a little time looking closer, however, and you might start to see that the changes aren’t even tiny… but are profound.
Like that moment when your serious and grave focus at work gets interrupted for something completely goofy and ridiculous… like a child running into your office with flower sunglasses on, a lay around his neck, his shirt off, no shoes, all while laughing hysterically as he tries to escape from mom.
…It ain’t that deep.
Or that moment when you do something completely goofy and ridiculous… like get out of your car and dance foolishly in a parking lot with music blasting because the song that came on is too good not to.. and the person you’re with gives you the same goofy and ridiculous energy back.
…Surround yourself with people who make being you easy.
Or that moment when you sit down to relax after doing something really hard… like show up to the gym or your workout class after an already long and challenging day and still giving it your best effort even though you felt like getting into the car itself required more energy than you had… and feeling accomplished and proud and completely content in doing so.
…Nothing worthwhile comes easily.
What are some simple moments from your recent days and what might those profound truths be for you?
It’s weird.
When I’m stuck, thinking about what to write but can’t think of anything good to say… a word will whisper itself into my mind.
Like a mantra of sorts. A focal point for my awareness. A prompt from my meandering muse.
And it’s never at the outset. Only after I’ve struggled for a bit. Maybe 15 – 30 minutes into a good staring at the blank page session that it’ll suddenly appear…
Unprompted. Unpracticed. And weirdly unconscious.
“…Build.”
For years, this word speaks itself into existence in my mind.
And to this day, I’m not quite sure why or where it comes from.
But what I choose to believe is that whispers that come from somewhere deep, somewhere unconscious… are oftentimes far more powerful, and carry much more weight than anything the conscious is screaming, spiraling, and yapping about in the forefront.
Who’s more rich:
Worth meditating on in your life: If becoming rich in money is at the expense of any of the former ideas—I’m not so sure the end result is more rich.
I had some time to kill after an errand and before a dinner yesterday.
…Not enough time to go home and too early to show up to dinner.
So I started driving around aimlessly when I found myself curiously turning into a cemetary.
I’m not quite sure why I decided to make that turn, but I leaned into the moment anyway.
I took my foot off the gas and allowed my car to creep its way slowly, slowly forward.
Past the gravestones… past the trees… past the flower dedications…
And I read the names.
I imagined the lives lived.
I saw laughing and crying, working and dancing, succeeding and failing…
But mostly, I saw loving and losing.
It took me about 20 minutes to slow roll through that cemetery…
And it resulted in one of the most profound meditations I’ve had in a while.
Each one of those gravestones represented a life lived by a person who had a consciousness just like us… who similarly and most likely felt like the main character of reality… who knew about mortality, of course, but never really believed it actually applied to them, too.
Maybe you should try it? Maybe it’d result in a similar experience for you? Maybe it’s exactly the kind of perspective sobering errand you could use in your life right about now?
I wanted to watch a fight on tv tonight.
…But I didn’t have the right subscription.
…What a great opportunity to reach out to friends to see if they wanted to watch it together at a local spot or house that had the right subscription.
Are the obstacles in your path the end of that journey? …Or are the obstacles in your path actually the way?
“Whenever something isn’t working in our career or our business, we naturally stop and ask why. We look for patterns, analyze what went wrong, and try to improve it. But we don’t always do the same with ourselves.” ~ Rosy Singh
Isn’t that the truth…
Why is it that we take our professional growth so seriously… all the way down to the cent on our profit and loss statements… and create the most elaborate graphs and visual metrics to understand trends… and do all of this complex training and research to improve strategies…
…While when it comes to our personal growth, we don’t even have the slightest clue how many calories we’re eating or need to be eating each day—let alone grams of protein or sugar or carbs. We can’t seem to type the questions into search bars that would tell us how to exercise optimally, create a profitable side hustle, or create content that resonates with people. We can’t even seem to read a page or two of a book that promises to transform the entire fabric of our lived reality as we know it.
…Isn’t that something?
Maybe it’s the accountability of having a boss and coworkers and dependents?
Maybe it’s the years of programing and brainwashing and test taking?
Maybe it’s the mismatch in priorities and perspective and energy expenditure?
…Whatever it is: maybe it’s time to reclaim some of that mental acuity, attention to detail, and borderline obsessive care and point it more generously at our personal life?