Category: Direction Matters

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.

Some questions to reflect on as we close out the third quarter of 2024 and enter the final quarter…

Start by bringing to mind your goals/resolutions/intentions for 2024.

1. In what ways have you succeeded? What do these successes reveal to you about yourself?

2. In what ways have you failed/deviated? What does this reveal to you about yourself?

3. With this insight in mind, how will you either modify those original goals/resolutions/intentions or change them so you can better align your actions with your direction and close out 2024 strong?

For me, writing new long-form articles each week and creating two new Art of Forward Guides were two of my big goals.

I succeeded in drafting one guide and creating maybe five new articles. I failed at producing as much as I aimed simply because I didn’t budget dedicated times to those tasks.

My thought was I would do the long form writing and guide creating AFTER I finished my daily writing and quote curating. But, this rarely left me with any decent chunks of time at all. It takes at least an hour of dedicated time to work on longer form projects like the ones I wanted to create and I was mostly left with twenty minutes (if that…!) on a regular basis.

And so the adjustment I’m making is precisely that: adding in a dedicated hour on Thursdays and Saturdays to get this done. It almost sounds silly sharing this because of how obvious this is… but, oftentimes, it’s the simple—almost silly—adjustments that make the biggest difference.

…How about you?

What is your dream and where does it come from?

…Does it come from your parents?

…Does it come from your associates/friends?

…Does it come from your social media feeds?

…Does it come from jealousy or resentment?

…Does it come from a feeling of lack or unworthiness?

…Does it come from insights as to what makes you feel alive?

…Does it come deeply and authentically, from you?

Most people’s dreams are infiltrated with ideas that actually aren’t in alignment with their innermost self’s ideas.

…And if you never sit with the question and do some honest inner work, you’ll never know which ideas are whose.