…Be strong.
I help busy people do inner work.
Category: Living Well
The secret to not having FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out) is to bring all of your presence into the moment you’re already in.
Lean into courage. Find the curiosity. Fill yourself up with everything already around you. Create and emit the energy you find yourself looking elsewhere for. Get others to jump on board. Become the FOMO others think about—not to make them feel bad, but because that thought will guide you forward towards the time you most want to have. You’re only missing out if your mind is elsewhere of your body. Keep the two together and suddenly, your spirit will start to shine unconditionally bright.
I went on a 6-hour roadtrip with my mom and grandmother today—neither of whom I get to spend too much time with on a regular basis.
This was not the time to be in a hurry to arrive… or to bring an anxious energy into the space… or to cycle through thoughts in my own head…
This was the time to slow roll… to bring a relaxed energy into the space… to ask interesting questions…
The point of a trip isn’t to quickly get where you’re going and then back (otherwise, why go at all?). The point of the trip is to uniquely experience as much as you can while you’re gone.
And nothing blocks experience like rushing and trying to arrive elsewhere quick.
…And it’d more than probably be a drag.
…Put me at a music festival with banging dance song after banging dance song after banging dance song and friends who match big dance energy?
…And at the end of a 45k step night, you may just find me wanting more. Like it wasn’t enough. Like all I wanted to do was go back and do the 45k steps all over again.
…Something you’d more than probably not catch me saying if I just walked the 45k steps straight up.
Alignment makes everything exponentially easier.
While staying at a friend’s house in Florida, I came to find out that his girlfriend is the president of their Home Owners Association (HOA).
I asked what a day in the life of an HOA President looks like and she said, “Listening to a ton of complaints—even when trying to sit by the pool, devoting a ton of extra time to fixing things—and doing all the hiring of others to fix things, and trying to convince people to budget more money towards the Association (that comes out of their pocket) so they all can have a better living space vs just letting everything go.”
I asked her what the incentive was for her to be doing all of this extra work… and she said, “Welp, somebody had to do it. Because the path they were on wasn’t future focused and things were taking a turn for the worse.”
…And she’s not getting paid a dime.
…Just going above and beyond to make their shared living space—one that supports 300+ people—a better place.
…An example we all might be able to learn from.
What if being in a hurry was your new reminder to breathe and look around?
What if being in a hurry turned into a trigger that slowed you down?
What if being in a hurry was actually a mentality—a perspective—that robbed you of life?
…Because being in a hurry (100% of the time) means you’re not where you are. You’re future focused—because what’s happening right now isn’t as important as what you’re hurrying to.
And while that may be true some of the time… what isn’t true is that you always (finally) mentally arrive.
You’re free to log-in to Facebook—but you’re not free from its algorithmic feed.
You might log-in with the intention of checking in on friends, but what results is a firehose of content that each carefully analyzes your every touch of your finger—down to the pixel—so as to craftfully, cunningly, with an incomprehensible amount of precision… guide you into a rabbit hole… featuring content that keeps you logged in, swiping and scrolling, vegetating and droning for as long as it can manage.
See what we need to realize is that in so many cases in life, we’re free to make whatever choice(s) we want, but we’re not free from the consequences of those choices.
Logging into social media apps is a free choice, but what we get shown is no longer completely up to us.
Hanging out with certain people is a free choice, but what gets done, discussed, and experienced is no longer completely up to us.
Choosing where we spend our time is a free choice, but who we run into, the vibes of the environments, the types of experiences we’re prone to having are no longer completely up to us.
Which is why it’s more important than ever to take control of our free choices and choose to act in ways that minimize the potential downside and maximize the upside.
Rather than log-in to social media apps, maybe we choose to log-in to reading apps instead.
Rather than hang out with toxic types, we make more space for and hang out with healthy types.
Rather than choose to spend our time at bars/clubs, maybe we spend more time at gyms/cafes.
Freedom has consequences… choose wisely.