The full collection of explorations.
You never know who would love the person you hide. And you'll never find out so long as you stay in hiding. For hiding isn't selective. Hiding hides you from everybody's sight. And if the person you were meant to love sees the person you're only pretending to be— would they recognize you?
Your hearing is as good as your ears. Hearing aids can help with that.
Your sight is as good as your eyes. Glasses and contacts can help with that.
Your life is as good as your mindset. Art, music, books, videos, nature, mantra, writing, therapy, mentors, exercise, relaxing, initiative, laughter, kindness, presence, podcasts, gratitude, journaling, having fun, meditation, forgiveness, compassion, speaking up, aiming higher, slowing down, self-discipline, healthy eating, curating media, embracing flaws, working harder, working smarter, helping friends, helping strangers, doing what’s hard, making things easier, athletic endeavors, community service, taking more breaks, building new habits, getting better sleep, minimizing resistance, embracing spontaneity, establishing boundaries, accepting responsibility, eliminating expectations, befriending better people, redefining what you desire, cutting back on obligations, venturing into the unknown, reprioritizing your priorities, saying “No” when you want to, saying “Yes” when you’re scared to, eliminating all comparison to others, letting go of what’s outside of your control, focusing more energy on what’s inside your control, immersing yourself in wisdom—
—can help with that.
Maybe not all at once, of course. But a few at a time? Undoubtedly.
Order doesn’t matter. Making mindset a priority is what matters. If you don’t, it’s like expecting ears to get better without aids or eyes to get better without glasses.
The more we associate movement to work the less likely we are to do it.
When you look at kids, movement is natural.
They run, skip, and jump without any mental resistance or worries at all—all while being told that they need to calm down and “stop,” by adults.
How ironic, that when we get old, we are told we aren’t moving enough and that we need to start running, skipping, and jumping more.
…And then end up paying huge sums of money for boot camp trainers, fitness guides, and programs that’ll hopefully, somehow, maybe retrain our brains to overcome the mental resistance and worries that were once non-existent.
Maybe, we could learn a thing or two from kids.
Maybe, if we stopped looking at exercise as an obligation and looked at it as an expression of bodily freedom, we’d more joyfully move our way to health without so many daily, mental battles and wars.
Rather than trying desperately to wake up earlier, focus on going to bed earlier.
There’s so much advice focused around “30 minutes earlier,” “5am club,” “rising before the sun,” and while I’m not arguing that it isn’t great if you can do that—what’s not great is subtracting sleep time from already sleep-deprived souls.
Prioritize getting a full night of sleep before you try prioritizing early rising.
The people who burn bridges to light their way are the same people who complain that they don’t have enough bridges to cross.
Generating ideas is not like emptying a reservoir.
You don’t tap into your idea source and then drain ideas until they’re all gone.
It works more like, well, a generator.
It requires mechanical energy in, but as a result, you get electrical energy out.
You expend energy getting into the right state, meeting up with the right people, organizing the tasks of your day, staring at enough blank screens, cataloguing through the other ideas of the world until—it happens.
Your mechanical energy is converted.
And you are no longer draining a reservoir, but rather are generating a type of electrical output that lights up your mind and charges your whole body.
The reality is, if you feel like you’re “out of ideas,” it isn’t because you’ve emptied what you had—what’s really happened is your generator needs to be looked at and fixed.
This might involve a change in how you optimize your state, changing who you spend your time with, organizing your tasks in more inspiring ways, being more patient with your process, forcing yourself to get more bored, or spending more time cataloguing other idea sources.
And if your generator isn’t broken, then, you simply need to put more mechanical energy in.
Your first priority each day should be doing that which improves your state.
Because the byproduct of an improved state is more of the same. It overflows from your being. It starts a positive upward spiraling loop. Your happiness increases their happiness, which increases yours even further, which increases theirs further and so on.
Influencing others becomes a joy, they find joy in influencing you, and it’s hardly a task.
If you start from a place of lack, discontent, and busyness—then, that too, will attract more of the same. It overflows from your being. It starts a negative downward spiraling loop. Your discontent increases their discontent, which increases yours further, which increases theirs further and so on.
Influencing others positively will become a chore because it will be in direct contradiction to your own state—and it’ll hardly be a joy for anyone involved.
Start each day with a conscious series of efforts designed to improve your state. Whether that’s exercise, meditation, reading, writing, walking—it doesn’t matter. What matters is that you identify what works for you and you prioritize it each morning in a non-negotiable way.