The full collection of explorations.
The more time you spend thinking about how you can get other people to like you…
The less time you’ll be able to spend thinking about how you can become someone you like.
And here’s the catch-22.
The more time you spend becoming someone YOU like… the more likely other people will like you.
And the more time you spend trying to be someone who is liked… the less other people will end up liking you.
Wanna know why you feel anxious?
Too many open processes.
You’re doing too much; thinking too much; taking on too much.
What you need is a healthy dose of less.
Less obligation. Less running around. Less distraction.
So that you can focus more on closing what’s already open.
A desire for more isn’t usually satisfied with more. It forever renews.
A desire for less, however, can be satisfied.
Eventually, all that will be left is what’s most useful, important, and necessary.
THIS is the desire that should be forever renewed.
Moving from consumer to creator can be intimidating.
Consuming is risk-free, relaxed, and dopamine-releasing—but, unfulfilling.
Creating is risk-taking, nerve-wracking, and self-exposing—but, rewarding.
One intermediary step that helped me is curating.
Which, many people don’t realize, is a form of creation in its own right.
Taking the best of what you find and creating your own unique content playlist(s) is an art form—one that highlights unique taste.
The best part is this: by immersing yourself in what speaks to you and your unique tastes—you’ll start making connections with your unique life experiences and ideas… it’s inevitable because you’ll only ever be pulled to curate what resonates.
And oftentimes, the byproduct of good curation over enough time will be creation.
Justin Egliskis believes that our minds can become prisons if we abstain from mental work and he focuses on having conversations around health and resiliency.
In this podcast episode, Justin and I chat about what attention to detail says about you, the intrinsic benefits of exercise, the importance of building skills, why long-term vision is crucial and much more.
You can listen to the episode using the embedded player below or (if you don’t see it) you can find it on Spotify here. Thanks and enjoy!
To see Matt’s other LIVE audio conversations, click here.
The things you do daily shouldn’t be misery inducing.
They also shouldn’t be challenge-free and mind-numbing.
The things you do daily should be somewhere in the goldilocks middle.
Easy enough to show up for (even when you don’t want to); hard enough to keep you from atrophy or regression.
Get this balance wrong and you’ll either burn-out (and yo-yo) or blow out the flame of your potential.
Two consequences that are happening far too often in our society.
It’s time to level up your Goldilocks game, eh?
Have you ever been the target of a random act of kindness?
Have you ever wondered how far back the inspiration for that act goes?
Maybe not far at all.
Maybe that stranger just spontaneously acted.
Or maybe it goes back centuries… back to a medieval time when a farmer gave a homeless fellow some crops for free—just because. And they paid it forward and so did the next fellow and so on.
Maybe kindness ripples through time like waves in a pond—temporarily elevating each water particle touched by the wave until gracefully returning them back to where they started.
Maybe it’s that temporary elevation that gives us the perspective we need to carry on with a lighter heart; a more caring heart; a more kind heart.
For it is only when we are elevated that we can more clearly see what was holding us back down below. And we gain an understanding that becomes a new guiding light for when we find ourselves back down—as we inevitably will in life.
But, we are not lowered to where we started—no.
We are lowered with new eyes. Eyes that have seen and felt an existence at a higher plane. And once we see what is up above, we can’t unsee it; once we feel what is up above, we can’t unfeel it.
And maybe this is the cause of perpetual kindness. People infectiously sharing what elevated them, onward and outward to the outer banks of society and for the duration of all time.
And maybe all we need to do to activate that sometimes seemingly dormant desire is remember that beautiful perspective we each once had.