What might feel like “stuck” might actually be cocooning.
Take this time of stillness as a disguised opportunity to accelerate your evolution.
Eventually, “stuck” will no longer be able to hold you in place.
Become “unstuck” by outgrowing your current situation.
Working on your weaknesses will make you average (at best).
Working on your strengths gives you the best chance at becoming above average—maybe even excellent.
Spend little to no time working on your strengths, however, and you’ll quickly become average (or below average) and struggle to contribute to the world in powerful ways.
The trick is to align strength-building with the largest block(s) of available time you can afford each day and double/triple down on developing them compared to your weaknesses.
Because remember: your weaknesses are somebody else’s strengths. Let them own that skillset.
You focus on owning yours.
That is how you become so good that you can’t be ignored.
And that is the best aim to have in today’s hyper-competitive, hyper-connected world.
Nobody is desperately seeking to add average to their team/company/lifestyles.
In today’s media driven world, there’s a ton of pressure to grow personal media accounts.
Which isn’t surprising because if what everybody is talking about is their favorite influencers, viral content, and follower counts—then, of course that’s what’s going to be at the top of everybody’s minds.
But, never let vanity growth take priority over interpersonal growth.
Like, when you feel obligated to consume all of your favorite creators new content, to post x new items to your socials, and to get that big project done for more revenue—but haven’t done anything for yourself…
…That’s a problem.
Maybe not immediately because maybe you can pull it off.
But, long-term? It will be. Because an absence of personal growth indicates a presence of personal atrophy.
And personal atrophy can only be hidden behind creative marketing for so long.
Eventually, people see through the shiny packaging and absorb the raw content for what it is.
And if what it is is regressing, then it won’t be long before they move to a different place where there is growth.
There’s nothing wrong with wanting to influence more people or make more money.
There is something wrong with prioritizing those things at the expense of your interpersonal needs.
And not just because, you know, mental health, but because interpersonal growth IS the means to any worthwhile/ meaningful vanity growth.
So, remember, when you only have time to do one or the other, doing something for yourself should always get the priority.
Even when vanity growth seems to be the only thing everybody else is concerned about.
**Especially when.
Beware: in many cases, it’s when we’re attempting to be most useful to the world that we actually end up being the least useful to ourselves.
An outward focus on productivity and getting things done can easily turn into a toxic work ethic that leads us to disregard the things we most need to do for our own personal wellness.
This is classic workaholic-ism.
Now, beware: the remedy I’m going to offer, like most pills, might be hard to swallow.
What we need to become comfortable with and practice is the idea of uselessness.
That’s right—being more useless to the world.
Did that thought make you cringe a little?
It’s got a distinctly counter-culture sound to it that might make you feel uneasy when thinking about.
Which would only further prove my point.
Being useless to the world isn’t an attack on your self-worth. It’s the very means through which you get to be more useful to yourself.
…Time when you get to stop compromising, negotiating, accommodating, pleasing, bending-over-backwards for, and sucking up to others in order to get things done.
Being useless to the world is about total and complete surrender to outward obligations and a wholesome focus towards the calls of your spirit.
Not towards distraction, inaction, or suppression—but towards introspection, healing, and overflowing.
Because we can only ever be as useful to the world as we become useful. And if we’re only ever focused on being useful to others, we never have a chance to be useful to ourselves. And one of the only times we get to ever be most useful to ourselves is when we’re most useless to the world.
Swallow the pill.
We are a mind, a body, and a spirit.
We cannot perform at peak capacity with just one and not the others.
Train the body to improve the mind; train the mind to improve the body.
Train the mind to improve the spirit; train the spirit to improve the mind.
Train the spirit to improve the body; train the body to improve the spirit.
Order doesn’t matter.
Spending time on EACH is what matters.
What are the things that make you feel great?
And I’m not talking about 10 seconds great… I’m talking about 10 hours great.
I’m not talking about pleasure-seeking tasks—I’m talking about soul-filling tasks.
Exercising? Walking? Journaling? Meditating? Stretching?
First of all, once you come up with your list—why not include each of those things into each of the days of your week?
Why would you ever skip out on the things that make you feel great?
Your state—mentally, physically, emotionally—affects everything else in life. And so they should get the top priority each and every day.
Especially on the days when your state is at its lowest.
Skipping state-boosting tasks when you feel off/down/awful is a mistake and only reinforces that feeling of off/down/or awful.
And, worth noting, skipping them on the days when your state is at its highest is also a mistake.
Because if you stop doing the things that make you feel great when you’re feeling great—it won’t be long until you’re no longer feeling great again.
And up and down the rollercoaster you’ll go.
Better to prioritize feeling great on all the days.
Unpopular opinion: Read slower.
Forget 2x/3x-ing your speed.
Blasting through someone’s deep work is like dumping a gallon of water into your mouth all at once.
Drink deeply from the words that were carefully chosen for each page of any given book.
Finish each drop.