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Category: Direction Matters

(Re)Aligning Actions With Direction

Published on September 30, 2024

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?

Stepping Into Our Higher Power

Published on September 17, 2024

One of the most exciting things about our path is that we can choose to change it at any given moment. It only takes one proper decision.

There’s an adult student in the martial arts school I teach at, for example, who just a few months ago was only that—a martial arts student.

Today, I just had a conversation with an associate of mine about potentially hiring this student to become an employee.

What caused this drastic shift in their (and our) path?

…A decision this student made to become a leader.

…Followed by another decision to come in early and stay late.

…Followed by another decision to ask to help other martial arts classes.

…Followed by another decision to ask for a job.

…Followed by another decision to earn it.

If it were up to our comfort zone, we would keep running back the same type of day over and over again. We would do the least we needed to do, we would settle for less, and we would rush to get it all done as fast as possible so we could get back to doing more settling and less.

But, if we can keep our highest version in mind… and we can channel the type of thinking that that version of ourself would hold… we can deliberately choose to take a different path… and step into our higher power instead.

Your Dream?

Published on September 12, 2024

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.

“Less Comparing; More Dancing”

Published on September 8, 2024

…That was the message I settled on after taking a 90 minute, Meet Your Higher Self Workshop at Burning Man.

The workshop started with guided group discussions around Higher Self and what that even means. We shared ideas, did visualizations, talked about our greatest dreams, our greatest fears, and discussed how each of us are messengers who, by embodying all that is our Higher Self, get to communicate a specific message to the world.

And the ultimate prompt that lead to my above message was, “What’s the message that you’re carrying into the world?”

By “less comparing” I mean do everything in your power to reduce the amount of time you spend exposing yourself to people, places, and things that exacerbate your instinct to judge and make you dwell on all that’s better in others and worse in yourself. Particularly, less media featuring distorted perceptions of beauty, success, and happiness—and less time with people and in places where comparison is hyper prevalent.

By “more dancing” I don’t necessarily mean just more dancing—although dancing is one of the closest examples I could think of to express this next sentiment. What I ultimately mean is more time spent in moments of uninhibited self-expression. Uninhibited as in ego-less; without a care for what others think; done purely for the sake of celebrating a moment of being alive. And for me, spontaneous dancing is the complete embodiment of that. And it’s something we need more of it in this world.

This is the message I hope to carry into the world.

Now I pass the question off to you… What’s your message?

One Lesson From 35 Years…

Published on August 18, 2024

Today, my dad asked me what I’ve learned from 35 years of life.

After thinking about it more, and to keep it concise, I’d say what’s become more and more clear to me—in these modern times—is that the path forward almost always goes against the current of society.

The current of society is pushing with increasing intensity each day towards:

  • Screens… swim against it and aim to keep your screen time to an absolute minimum.
  • Social media… swim against it. Spend more time IRL. Minimize comparisons. Reclaim your attention. The attention you bring to your moments become the building blocks you use to define your life.
  • Comfort… swim against it. Maybe not all of the time—it’s good to spend an appropriate amount of time relaxing. But, for a good chunk of your day? Aim for uncomfortable. Exercise… learn… experiment… meditate… fail… etc.
  • Hate… swim against it. Divisive media that elicits reactions gets pushed to the top of timelines—push love instead. Modern news is war, crime, death, collapse, fear, and so on… spend your time consuming the opposite instead.
  • Busyness… swim against it. Intentionally slow down. Intentionally free up time. Intentionally stop looking at/thinking about everything you need to do and just focus on one thing at a time. Not being in a hurry is an EXCELLENT sign that you’re enjoying the process. And not enjoying the process, let’s not forget, is not enjoying your life.

I could go on and on with this analogy, but as I mentioned above… concise.

Swimming against the current has become a sort of mantra and guiding light for my life. One that I’d encourage you to think about for yours.

Figuring It Out As You Go

Published on August 9, 2024

If your goal is to wander, get lost, find your way back around, lean into serendipity, and surrender to the universe—then by all means, figure it out as you go.

If your goal is to arrive at a specific destination, in a timely manner, following an optimized route—then, figuring it out as you go is a bad strategy. You would want to invest in research, planning, and coaching instead.

We all have goals in life.

And while you might think one of the above mentioned ways might be better for attaining any one of your life goals than the other… the reality is it’s probably better to approach all of your goal pursuits from more of a hybrid perspective.

All optimized and no wander leaves little room for serendipity, awe, or surprise.

All wander and no optimized leads to missed targets and wasted time, energy, and effort.

Take a look at some of your life goals. Where do you land on this spectrum?

Work Meetings

Published on August 7, 2024

Work meetings are to a business what GPS is to a traveler.

Each business has a direction and a target. The meetings keep us heading in the right direction to reach the target. Along the way, however, things change.

…People change, resources change, clients change, markets change, situations change, etc.

Without a meeting of the minds of those who run the businesses, it’s inevitable that their direction and ultimately, the target they hit, skew.

Work meetings discuss recent wins (so as to reinforce and double down on them), recent failures (so as to learn and adjust from them), upcoming events (so as to plan proactively for them), and overall strategy (so as to further improve and develop the actions taken by the team), amongst other things.

We’re all familiar, if not intimately so, with work meetings.

My question for you is: how familiar are you with family meetings? Spousal meetings? Muse meetings?

…Because just as work meetings are to a business what GPS is to the traveler, so too are family meetings to the family or spousal meetings to the spousal relationship or muse meetings to the art/creative gifts you share with the world.

Without them, deviations from the once clear direction and target become inevitable.

It’s nothing short of impressive how much time, energy, and resources we pour into work meetings.

…Maybe it’s time to appropriate some of that time, energy, and resource into other (assumingely equally if not more important) dimensions of our lives as well.