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Category: Being Action Oriented

What Are You Going To Do About It?

Published on August 13, 2021

The real source of your problems doesn’t come from your circumstances.

The real source of your problems comes from the person looking back at you when you look in the mirror.

See that person?

Sure, they haven’t been given the best start in life. But, neither has countless others. It can’t be changed so might as well focus on what’s important: what you’re going to do about it.

See, here’s the thing: that person in the mirror didn’t choose their starting line, but here’s what they have chosen:

  • When to start running.
  • At what pace to run.
  • How often to run vs. not run.
  • Who to run next to.
  • How seriously to take their running.
  • Where they want their finish line to be.
  • What to do when the running isn’t going well.
  • What to do when the running is going really well.
  • How often to invest in becoming a better runner.
  • Who’s brains they pick and how they apply the insight they gather.

People who blame their circumstances don’t get ahead, not because they started behind, but because they stay behind while they continue to blame, yell, and shout at their starting line.

The people who get ahead are the ones who: rather than source problems to circumstances, focus energy on solutions; rather than blame what’s out of their control, change what’s within it; rather than compare where they started, just get started!

The Perfect First Line

Published on August 4, 2021

I strongly disliked writing in school.

Mostly because I wanted to write my final copy on the first try.

Here’s how I remember most of my essay questions going: (1) Spend 75% of my time thinking about how the hell to write the perfect first line. (2) See another student hand in their essay and realize I was almost out of time. (3) Freak out! (4) Forget about the opening line and just start spewing everything I knew about the question before time was up. (5) Leave last.

It’s amazing how much more I got done when I stopped worrying about the perfect first line.

And later, when I learned how to accept the idea of rough drafts, suddenly, writing became a whole lot easier and much more enjoyable. Who knew?

Maybe if we learned how to accept “rough drafts” in life and dropped the idea of needing to start things “perfectly,” life would become a lot easier, too.

Stop Waiting To Be Saved

Published on July 31, 2021

You’ll always be disappointed if you’re always waiting for some big force to save you.

  • A letter from the government saying all of your debt has been forgiven.
  • For all of the demeaning people in your life to suddenly become compassionate.
  • The “magic pill” to finally be invented so you no longer have to exercise or eat well.

When you stop expecting these things to happen, suddenly, there’s no longer any disappointment. Just a refocused use of energy from what’s out of your control (government, people, metabolism, etc.) to what’s within. Now, you’re mental energy can be devoted to:

  • A clearly budgeted and well-thought out financial plan to tackle the debt you’re in.
  • A strategy for cutting out demeaning people and including more compassionate folks.
  • A ritual that allows you to eat well and exercise in enjoyable and long-term focused ways.

If you find yourself disappointed often, it might be because you’re waiting to be saved.

Save yourself.

Smile First

Published on July 29, 2021

Imagine coming across someone who was looking at their reflection in the mirror, without moving, for a considerable length of time. And you ask them what they’re doing, to which they reply, “I’m waiting for my reflection to smile.”

You’d probably chalk that person up as crazy.

But, what’s the difference between that person and the person waiting for a considerable length of time for their circumstances to change? Staring at your circumstances unwilling to make the first move until your circumstances smile back at you—is the same thing!

Circumstances change when you change.

Smile first.

The Best Seed Collector

Published on July 5, 2021

Idea gathering is addicting. It’s motivating. It’s exciting.

…It does nothing for you.

Gathering ideas is about as useful as gathering seeds—and I’m not talking about the kind you can eat.

Most of us have an incredible store of seeds that are doing nothing more than taking up space. And yet, what so many of us continue to do is carry on collecting more seeds for our store.

For what? Why? Because you want bigger ones? So you can collect them all? This isn’t Pokémon.

The thing about seeds is that they’re wildly inexpensive and abundant—like ideas. But, even just one seed planted and cared for well, can lead to something valuable. Certainly more valuable than the seed itself.

And it’s in the process of nurturing seeds and bringing plants to life where you learn the most and get the biggest return on your invested time anyway—not from seed collecting.

So, before you go searching for other seeds to collect, how about you plant and begin cultivating some of the seeds you already have?

What if, instead of being a well known collector of inexpensive seeds, you became a well known grower of increasingly valuable plants?

Hope Is Not A Strategy

Published on June 25, 2021

Hope is not a strategy.

  • “Hopefully, I’ll wake up on time.”
  • “Hopefully, I won’t get too busy.”
  • “Hopefully, I’ll do better tomorrow.”

Strategy is action-oriented.

  • “Here’s how I’m going to wake up on time.”
  • “Here’s how I’ll manage my tasks.”
  • “Here’s how I’ll do better.”

Hoping for change is about as helpful as praying for luck—it isn’t strategy, it’s lazy.

Even if change did happen luckily, wouldn’t you prefer to be the cause of change in your life? Rather than supernatural forces and serendipity doing the work for you?

The most successful among us don’t rely on hope or luck, they act. Will you?

Warning: Waiting For Inspiration Can Backfire

Published on February 25, 2021

“I’ve never believed that one should wait until one is inspired because I think that the pleasures of not writing are so great that if you ever start indulging them you will never write again.”

John Updike, via MoveMe Quotes

TicTok terrifies me. The first time I downloaded and opened the app, I lost an hour of my life in what felt like the blink of an eye—with all due respect to the creators. The pleasures of indulging in the app were so great that it felt like I lost consciousness and all sense of time. I haven’t opened the app since.

The same goes for video games. I tend to harbor an “all-in” type of personality. And when something captures my attention, it’s given my full and undivided attention. At one point in time, many years ago, I was “all-in” on video games. I once faked being sick so that I could skip school and play a new role-playing game (RPG) that I just got. I played for 16 hours straight, had Inception-type nightmares (that felt like they lasted years), woke up drenched in sweat, and quit—cold-turkey—immediately after. I haven’t played since.

Netflix even makes me nervous. The TV series that are available in today’s world, on-demand, are just too damn good. They’re literally designed to make you want to binge and they do a frighteningly good job at it. Each episode is exquisitely crafted to lead you right to the next and they only give you a few seconds to opt out of auto-play—RIGHT AFTER THEY LEAVE YOU AT A CLIFF. It’s preposterous. It’s brilliant. It’s why I keep my distance and only stream once (okay, sometimes twice) a week.

What scares me isn’t the act itself. It’s okay to TicTok, game out, and stream occasionally. What scares me is how easily time is lost to those outlets and how, if not careful, I could see myself losing a ton more time in a not-so-occasional way.

An hour in the blink of an eye? Is that really how I want to spend my hours? 16 hours straight without a break? I literally didn’t do anything else that day—not a single thing that contributed to myself or others. Binging an entire series? What about putting to words the series of my life?

My fear is that if I give these platforms an inch, they’ll take a mile—and it’s just not how I want to spend the miles of my life.