Category: Direction Matters

I started 2024 with a brainstormed list of five things I wanted to start prioritizing and said, “Pick one thing to focus 100% of your energy on. None of it ever works out to be as easy as it seems in your mind. Try to do too much and you’ll fail at it all. Get an A+ in one and you’ll be well on your way to properly conquering them all.”

So, naturally, I picked three things and made them my 2024 goals.

And, lo and behold, I didn’t accomplish any of them.

Who would’ve thought that picking one goal and focusing 100% of my energy on it would’ve been a better strategy?

…This is what I mean when I say I write these blogs for me more than any one else. 🤦🏻‍♂️

Anyways… what’s interesting is that in the second half of the year, I felt a noticeable pull towards creating a poster store and expanding the MoveMe Quotes shop into something more intriguing—which was one of my brainstormed ideas at the outset.

And what’s crazy is I can remember having this same pull towards building a poster store when I was picking from that original brainstormed list! …But, instead of listen, I told myself that new 30-day guides and video courses would be a more powerful value add to my audience and ignored it.

And lo and behold… here I am.

…Concluding 2024 with none of the three original goals accomplished and a poster store and expanded MMQ shop created.

A reminder to you (but, mostly me)… to listen more closely to the whispers of your inner guidance.

Fighting and suppressing its insight only ever delays the inevitable.

Last week, I finished reading the longest book I’ve ever read.

It was 970 pages… and used a small font.

I say this because it’s something a younger me would always look out for and judge books by.

But, what I learned after having read this book is that those were awful, awful indicators as to whether or not a book should be read.

And what only added to my resistance of reading longer books with smaller fonts… was my goal of reading a certain number of books every year.

Knowing I was “5 books behind schedule” made me want to read short books with larger fonts so I could catch up… leading me to pick books based on superficial markers and not substance.

And so, no, I won’t reach my goal of reading 40 books this year… in fact, I’m going to end up being quite short of that.

But, it doesn’t matter. Because the whole point of goals is to give you a direction to drive towards… and I’d say, I’m driving towards what “40 books read this year” represents—much more so even than if I’d read a bunch of superficially chosen books and got to 45.

Don’t miss the forest for the trees.

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P.s. The book I’m referring to above is Musashi—the classic samurai novel about the real exploits of the most famous swordsman. Would recommend.

Today’s going to be a busy day.

You have tasks that need to get done; people who need to be cared for; projects that need to be worked on; deadlines that need to be met; chores that need to get completed; bills that need to be paid; and not to forget—you have mental health that needs to be prioritized amidst it all…

Now, you could gas yourself up, paint the picture of you collapsing onto the couch at the end of your busy day where you’ll *finally* be able to relax, hit the ground running, and rush your way to reaching that destination asap…

Or… you could paint a totally different kind of picture instead…

…One where relaxing doesn’t happen at the end of your day… but one where relaxing happens throughout your day.

One where you take your time commuting one location to the next… where you slowly, but deliberately complete tasks… where you bring a calm presence to the people you cross paths with… where you slow hustle your way to excellence in all of the things you need to do rather than rush, short cut, and scrape by.

Because what you might find when you paint the “take your time” type of picture for yourself… is that your mental health might not need its own reserved time block within your days… because it will get taken care of in how you go about your days instead.

Not that there’s anything wrong with a little mental health break or siesta.

…But, there might be something a little more right with aligning mental health with your lifestyle as a whole instead.

You at your absolute best isn’t something that just happens.

It’s something you need to reverse engineer your way to.

And step 1 isn’t to start a new diet or hit an insane workout.

Step 1 is to figure out what you at your absolute best looks and feels like.

Most people have a vague idea that’s painted abstractly in the back of their mind that’s clouded over by unrelated, distractionary, impeding monkey-mind thoughts. And upon closer inspection, most people just have a cut and pasted montage of other people from across the internet who appear to be living their best life that looks good enough for them.

…And what I think is this isn’t good enough for you.

In fact, I’m of the mindset that you can’t even begin to sculpt the image or feel of your absolute best self until you’ve traversed the landscape of your mind from the forefront—where it’s clouded and filled with unrelenting monkey mind thoughts—to the back… where the unfinished sculpture stands.

Once you understand this, you realize it takes 10, 20, maybe even 30 minutes of undistracted inner travel before you can even begin to work on the look and feel of your absolute best self.

Cutting magazine pictures, saving social media images, and watching short form videos can be helpful—but it’s superficial. And the idea of them goes away when they go away (and you’re back to monkey mind).

Sculpting takes quality time—and sculpting is exactly what the process of realizing your absolute best self should look and feel like. Lengthy mental commutes, tough chiseling decisions, an ongoing/ hard-to-finish project… that becomes more meaningful and real every visit.

If your days are dragging by and you regularly feel a sense of misery swelling up within the confines of your day, do yourself a favor and put a carrot into your future.

You know, like a concert or a spa day or a cabin reservation or a flight to a beach or roadtrip with a friend.

Being pulled forward towards something you’re really looking forward to is a much better way forward than trying to force yourself forward by smacking yourself with a stick (or metaphorically getting smacked by a stick from someone else) whenever you need a push in life.