The full collection of explorations.
I don’t judge days by the amount of inspiration I’m feeling; I judge days by the amount of opportunity I’m given.
And each day, I’m granted 86,400 moments—86,400 opportunities to engage with and experience life.
Wait for inspiration to strike inside your moments—and you’ll be waiting around for much, if not all, of your 86,400 moments. Quite possibly more as days turn into weeks or months…
Start striking regardless of how you feel and what you might find is inspiration on the other side. On the side that appears mundane, average, ordinary, normal, expected…
For what is it that starts a fire? Is it a lightning strike? Yes—occasionally. Is it some tinder, kindling, firewood, and a match? Yes—much more consistently and reliably.
And what’s surrounding you right now? Lightning strikes? …Maybe if you’re in a creative phase or riding some high powered muse momentum. Is it some tinder, kindling, and firewood—aka blank papers/canvas, keyboards/pens, computers/connections? I’d say yes—undoubtedly.
Everything you need is already available to you.
All you have to do is categorize, organize, and light the damn match.
Believe it.
P.s. I ran out of words yesterday, so to catch up, I’m thankful for The Almonds Guy and today, funnily enough, I’m thankful for inspiration lightning strikes. Because while building fires manually works—inspiration strikes are exciting as hell and I gotta give them a shout out for being so.
I lost my voice yesterday.
And while it was fun “retracing my steps” and “looking all over the school” with some of my young students who were trying to help me “find” it—losing your voice isn’t fun business.
Especially not when your voice is such an integral part of your business. Which is why today, I’m thankful for it. It really is funny how you don’t think to appreciate a thing until it’s gone. I’m fairly confident this wouldn’t have made it to my 15 day list if this hadn’t happened.
None-the-less, here we are. And here I am, bracing myself for an upcoming series of Martial Arts graduation ceremonies, classes, and coaching sessions that require a functioning voice box (and a damn loud one at that). And a question I’ve been reflecting on that has guided me in many challenging situations before is, “What good can come from this?”
…And you know what’s funny about reflecting on that question? You tend to find good things buried inside even crappy situations. Because the reality is—I’m not getting it back today. No sense dwelling on that. But, letting my mind dwell in the realm of creative solutions can be helpful for sure.
And what I’m now seeing are excellent opportunities for team members and students to step up—not only to help me out, but to help themselves out by building skills inside higher pressure situations that they don’t normally get to step into.
So you know what I’m going to do today?
…Let those who are willing step into them.
In a recent newsletter, Mark Manson offered a wonderful analogy for happiness. He said it was like, “Pleasant background music to everything else you do in life.” …He explained how it isn’t the highs; it isn’t the highlights; it isn’t the getting high—it’s the general feeling that arises in the background of it all.
And the more we mistake happiness for the highs in our lives, the more unhappy we’ll be. Because, by definition, the highs can only be few and far between.
The real test of happiness is when there is precisely nothing exciting happening. When there are no extraordinary moments unfolding, no phones out dealing dopamine, and no drugs or alcohol around. When it’s just you inside one of those vast majority moments that exist in-between the highs.
…What does the music sound like? Is it pleasant or is it annoying? Is it something you can even hear?
Here’s my recommendation: as you would create a playlist of songs on your phone to elicit/ facilitate certain moods, so too should you create a playlist of activities in your life that do the same.
Things that aren’t extraordinary in nature, aren’t added to highlight reels, and don’t involve state-altering substances—normal moment things that can help you come into tune with the background music of your life.
Things like screen-free walks, hikes, meditation, art, dance, exercise, journaling, conversation, etc.
Things that are… pleasant.
P.s. Today, I’m thankful for a quiet neighborhood. A place where I can easily tune and re-tune the background song(s) of my life.
Over the past few months, I have been focused on reducing screen time—particularly as it pertains to using social media apps.
I have largely stopped posting, turned off essentially all notifications, and am being more mindful of the itches that arise to open and scroll.
This past Saturday, however, I had a moment where I decided to scratch that itch and check IG. Before I knew it, I was already 1 hour deep into a video binge of a Brazilian couple’s dancing page. Not joking. They were completely captivating and shared great content—but, it wasn’t how I wanted to spend an hour of my day.
This is the kind of thing that happens all of the time, with so many of us.
Hours and hours drained from our days watching content that’s captivating and well produced (this isn’t a shot at the content), but that’s distractionary in nature and veers us from our main path. My current path, for example, is to reallocate the time saved and put it towards IRL meetups, reading, meditation, deep work, and/or sleep.
How much better my Sunday might’ve felt, I wonder to myself, if I hadn’t stayed up that extra hour Saturday night scrolling through IG? And I wonder the same for you and how much better you might feel if you reallocated just 1 hour/ week of distractionary in nature media and put it towards something better?
Day 3 of #15DaysofGratitude: Thankful that I grew up in a time where screen time wasn’t a concern—having a no-screen-foundation helps me to navigate this modern, screen driven world in a way that those who only know the screen-filled life… can’t imagine.
Today while playing basketball, three of the people I was with got injured.
One was feeling pain in his Achilles tendon. Another tweaked his knee. And another took a hit in the ribs and groin. They each sat out the rest of the game.
Injuries happen. Especially when participating in intense exercise that involves sprinting, jumping, and physical contact. And when they do, all we tend to think about is, “Why me?” “Why now?” “How long will this last?” “When will I be healed?” “When will I be back to normal?”
…When we get injured, sick, or experience grief, suddenly our vast array of life interests, excitements, and focuses become one—getting back to feeling normal.
And today, I’m thankful that, all things considered, I’m feeling pretty normal. No serious injuries; no serious sicknesses; no imminent grief looming in the background of my life.
Feeling normal isn’t something I think many of us remember to show gratitude for—mostly because it’s precisely when we’re feeling normal that we’re able to fan our attention out to everything else in the world—and so we do. And if that’s you, I hope you can take a few minutes to come back and feel the full gratitude of normality in this moment.
Because right now, I know those three people I played ball with are probably only thinking one thing and it might be something you don’t even realize you’re so fortunate to have.
P.s. In case you missed it, you can read the best of what I posted to MoveMe Quotes last week, here.