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Month: August 2022

The Usefulness Of Short Sprints

What do you do when you reach a ditch in the road that you can’t quite step over?

You back up; get a good running start; and jump it.

So does it work in life.

Staring at a ditch? …Staring doesn’t help.

Take a couple steps back, elevate your thinking, get a running start, and jump it.

Sometimes the way forward is backward. Sometimes we need to temporarily commit to an elevated pace to finally clear the ditch we’ve been staring at in its face. Sometimes what’s needed… is a short sprint.


P.s. “Backwards” doesn’t mean more hustle. “Backwards” has much more to do with the opposite.

On Surrounding Yourself

You don’t wait for successful, peaceful, adventurous, joyful, and curious individuals to come to you.

No. The way you make best use of the fact that, “We are who we surround ourselves with” is by DOING the searching, initiating, conversing, networking, and risk-taking.

And… equally as important: the removing, excluding, muting, blocking, avoiding, and ignoring.

Either that or… become one of the successful, peaceful, adventurous, joyful, and curious individuals who are sought out yourself.

20 Remarkable Humans Who Transformed Their Pain Into Something Greater

Below is a brief list of 20 remarkable humans who utilized and transformed their pain into something greater—something that made them into the remarkable humans we remember them to be (in no particular order):

  • Martin Luther King Jr. — Faced life-threatening racial violence and oppression.
  • Maya Angelou — Sexually abused and raped.
  • Pablo Picasso — Dyslexic and grew up poor.
  • Victor Frankl — Imprisoned at several Nazi concentration camps where his family was killed.
  • Franklin Roosevelt — Became partially paralyzed at 39 years old.
  • Oprah Winfrey — Gave birth at 14 years old and lost her child.
  • Frida Kahlo — Bedridden for months from a near-fatal automobile accident.
  • Jim Carrey — Experienced homelessness for an extended period of time.
  • Benjamin Franklin — Had to drop out of school at 10 years old.
  • Charlize Theron — Witnessed her mother kill her father.
  • Tony Robbins — Grew up in an abusive home with a poor stepfather.
  • Nelson Mandela — Wrongly imprisoned for 27 years.
  • Sylvester Stallone — Due to complications at birth, had a partially paralyzed face.
  • Tom Cruise — Born into poverty with an abusive father.
  • Frederick Douglass — Born into slavery, violence, and was separated from his parents.
  • Keanu Reeves — Dad left when he was 3. Lost a child. Lost a woman he loved.
  • Charlie Chaplan — Grew up poor. Dad left when he was 2. Mom was later sent to a psychiatric facility for mental health problems.
  • Ludwig von Beethoven — Deaf.
  • Stephen Hawking — Diagnosed at age 21 with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS).
  • Bethany Hamilton — Attacked by a shark at 13 years old (kept surfing and winning championships anyway).

Takeaway: What you might perceive as your biggest obstacle(s), heaviest burden(s), or greatest disadvantage(s) might very well be your most powerful source(s) of drive after all.

Our World Sucks

Wishing the world was a better place is nice—but not useful.

Complaining about how bad of a place the world is—is the opposite of useful.

Talk is cheap. And what our world needs is far from cheap…

What we need is the good stuff… the gold… what we need is more do-something-about-it.


I asked: What’s ONE thing you’ve either added or subtracted from your life that led to more inner peace? Here are the answers. I hope they help.

The Black Hole Of Desire

We can give people every ounce of love we have… and they’ll still want more.

We can give work every ounce of energy we have… and they’ll still want more.

We can give media every ounce of attention we have… and they’ll still want more.

We can give away all of ourselves… and it STILL won’t be enough.

Which is why, we need to put limits around what we give.

Otherwise, we’ll be left with nothing and for what?

…A temporary bump in satisfaction that will soon disappear into the life-sucking black hole that is the insatiable desire(s) of those in our world?

…No, thanks.

And it should be a, “No, thanks” from you, too.

Trying vs. Not Trying

Not trying may appear safe, but it’s actually quite risky.

Trying may appear risky, but it’s actually quite safe.

Appearances can be deceiving. And how your mind (ego) responds to what appears to be risky is… avoid at all costs.

The mind likes to preserve what’s here—what’s guaranteed. It likes to maintain its reputation, stray from embarrassment, and stick to what makes it (you) look good.

But, by not trying you:

  • Never learn
  • Become less competent
  • Miss moments of self-discovery
  • Close opportunistic/ serendipitous doors
  • Leave open-thought loops around “what if…” (regret)

See, it’s by trying that you get the opposite of all of the above mentioned things…

  • Insight
  • Competence
  • Self-Awareness
  • New opportunities / serendipity
  • Understanding of how things would’ve played out (no regret)

…An undoubtedly much safer means to living your best life.


P.s. In case you missed it, you can read the best of what I posted to MoveMe Quotes last week, here.

Get Ahead By Doing Less

When you do less, you can rest more.

When you rest more, you’ll have more energy to do what’s hard.

When you do more of what’s hard, you’ll get ahead.

Don’t let people fool you into thinking you always have to do more—it’s a trap.

When you take your total energy and divide it amongst more tasks it equals less energy for all of the tasks: including (and most importantly) the hard ones.

And less energy for the hard tasks is how you fall behind.

Don’t fall for it.

Do less.