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.
Envy not the person who has what you don’t have or who has gone where you haven’t gone…
Envy the person who thinks not of what they don’t have or where they haven’t gone…
…And instead focuses solely on what’s here, what’s now, and where they have arrived.
For joy and gratitude in the current step is an excellent strategy for evoking more of the same in the next step. And the step after that.
And so too for the person who steps with envy. It only evokes more of the same. No matter how much you acquire or how many places you’ve gone.
Your body adapts to the demands of its environment.
Sit at a desk all day, take the elevator, use valet, consume passive entertainment on the couch, skip your workouts… and what you’ll effectively be telling your body is: all of that beautiful life energy you gifted me… isn’t needed.
And your body will reduce how much it produces in the future. Until you get to the point where doing even the most basic of tasks is exhausting.
Do the opposite and use it all up though? And your body will find ways to not only produce more, but increase your future stores.
The people with the most energy aren’t the ones who have saved their energy the most… they’re the ones who have used it up most consistently.
Remember this when you’re on the fence about showing up to your workout or playing with your kids outside or going for a walk around the block… because you’re tired.
…Yes, there’s a line that needs to be honored and rest could very well be the better decision if you’re truly fatigued.
But remember that what you agree to as being your energetic limit is what your body will adapt to from there. And if you’re being dishonest with yourself, then your energy stores will iteratively shrink. And if you’re being honest, then they’ll iteratively grow.
And why lie to yourself about something that can so drastically affect your life? Life energy is one of the ultimate life currencies… and the good news is that you get to spend all that your gifted each day and you’ll be fully replenished, plus some, the next!
Hope you have an exhausting day ;)
If I think too much about who’s on my email list, I have a really hard time settling on a topic.
Should I write for the parents?
Should I lean more towards business casual or drinking buddy language?
Should I bear in mind the people I’ve met through martial arts or music or social media or education or travel?
But then I come back to my mission statement: I help busy people do inner work.
…And I can focus again. Because I’m not writing for any one person on my list. In fact, I’m not even writing for the entirety of the people on my list.
…I’m writing for me. Because I’m busy. And I need to keep finding ways to do inner work.
Because I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: daily writing that’s inner work based is one of the best things I’ve ever done for my mental health, healing, and personal growth.
And if I can help some of the other busy people out there via the work I’m doing for myself… or help them build a practice that’ll guide them forward in the same way my practice has guided me… then that’s a pretty incredible bonus.
…It’s an event where people come together and celebrate—in a way most appropriate for the person—a life lived.
We celebrate this life because it’s a miracle it ever even happened—against odds in the trillions to one ballpark (that’s trillions with a “t”). We celebrate this life because of the impact it had on ours—one that helped shape our character and identity as we know it, in both the biggest and tiniest of ways. We celebrate this life because of the impact it had on others—an impact which likely rippled further out into the world than they or we could ever truly know.
And yes, we mourn the loss because the above has come to an end.
…But, does it though?
What if the celebration of life event is an exercise in keeping the person’s impact alive?
What if we could carry the best of that person’s legacy with us and continue to ripple it forward into the lives of others?
What if the person we lost was a byproduct of hundreds of thousands of people’s legacies who came before… all totaling up to the person we loved so dearly?
And what if by celebrating them not only at the event, but regularly, you’re helping total up the character and identity of those around into something millions of others will eventually come to appreciate and love so dearly?
Do you realize that, in an incalculable number of ways, you’re living a life of already answered prayers?
Think about it.
How many times were you terribly sick and prayed for health?
How many times have you feared for your life and saw things through to the other side?
How many times have you prayed for good news and gotten it?
How many times was a deal made where if the universe/higher power delivered “A,” you would offer back, “B”—and the universe delivered?
How many times have you prayed for a person? To heal? To find their way? To like you? And it came true?
…And how many times have we immediately moved on with our lives after an answered prayer… filling the universe only with multiplied additional prayers rather than even an ounce of gratitude?
Maybe one of the reasons we feel like life is unfair, is because for every one answered prayer, we ask for ten additional prayers to be answered… and we quickly forget about all that has already been fulfilled.
…But if you flipped that formula, and responded with 10 times the gratitude for every one answered prayer, maybe life being unfair wouldn’t be so bad after all.
Dear busy person,
A colleague and friend of mine just found out he has 6 months to 2 years to live.
This news could’ve just as easily been given to you.
…It could actually be beneficial for you to imagine it was.
Close your eyes. Visualize yourself in a doctor’s office after getting tests done the previous week. Today is results day. The doctor comes in and gets right to the point—no small talk. The above is the situation. And it’s said plainly and as a matter of fact. He says he’s sorry and walks out.
…What exactly were you so busy doing again?
…What was it that you were complaining about again?
…What important thing(s) did you say you were going to wait until later to do again?
The thought of death gives us the urgency to really live—whatever that means to you.
But when we bury death as an abstract, foreign concept into the deep, dark corners of our mind—we lose that urgency, don’t we?
Maybe it’s time we resurface it. Maybe it’s time we think about it again. Maybe today is a good day to imagine we only have 6 months left to live.
…Now what?
One of the reasons my work office got so cluttered and messy was because there were so many things that didn’t have a “home.”
I would be given beautiful cards, thoughtful gifts, art pieces, timeless pictures, and sentimental trinkets… and I would have to shove them into one of the limited places I had any open space at all.
And having worked in the same martial arts school for 20+ years… you can only imagine the amount of stuff I had crammed around.
One of my major goals this past weekend, when renovating and redesigning my work office was to give everything an intentional space—both for the things I was already given, and the things that would come.
I spent hours and hours going through it all, organizing it, imagining the appropriate space for it, shopping for the right pieces, and building/designing it—with my sister’s help, of course.
And it turned out beautifully. I’m very proud of the space and feel not only lighter from having removed all of the clutter and mess, but more joyful because so much of what was buried in a tiny drawer is now being featured on the walls and has space to breathe.
A bunch of a good thing shoved into a tiny drawer doesn’t do you or anybody else any good. And sometimes, that’s what’s making us feel bad—whether consciously or not. And all we have to do is give all of the amazingly good things we’ve already been given a home where we can see it, feel it, and experience it on a regular basis—rather than just always wishing for more and more.