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Category: Living Well

Honest Living

Published on March 15, 2022
  • To believe in compassion, but to live with indifference—is dishonest.
  • To believe in wisdom, but to regurgitate ignorance—is dishonest.
  • To believe in connection, but to choose isolation—is dishonest.
  • To believe in health, but to purchase sickness—is dishonest.
  • To believe in calm, but to succumb to haste—is dishonest.
  • To believe in truth, but to speak in lies—is dishonest.
  • To believe in love, but to act in hate—is dishonest.

The more of these inner contradictions that you behold (whether you consciously realize them or not), the more uneasy and conflicted you will feel towards yourself. And the more in alignment your beliefs and actions are, the more at ease and at peace you will feel.

Honest living happens when what you do aligns with what you believe.

And the byproduct of honest living is inner peace.

Pace, Posture, Breathing…

Published on March 5, 2022

This was my mantra during my second marathon.

It was a constant call of my attention to revisit the fundamentals of what was going to get me across that far and away finish line.

And they’re fundamentals that can help you cross the far and away finish lines in your life, too.

  • Pace: Resist the urge to run your marathon at your 1-mile pace. When you’re fresh, of course you can run faster. Those who can resist this temptation and can force themselves to run their marathons at their 26.2 mile pace are the ones who will be able to keep running even when they’re no longer fresh. This is the pace you must plan for.
  • Posture: When you have to repeat around 39,733 consecutive strides, even a slight break in posture or form can cause repetitive use pains/injuries—as is the case in daily life. And not just breaks in physical posture (i.e. hunching your back), but breaks in mental posture, too. On average we have around 12,000 – 60,000 thoughts per day—marathons in their own right. Is your mind chronically “hunched over” or “postured upright?”
  • Breathing: Erratic, shallow breathing drowns the body in carbon dioxide and forces fatigue. Having a consistent, adequate supply of oxygen is the fuel that allows the muscles to keep working optimally. Set a pace in your life that allows you to stay fresh; that allows you to breathe deeply. Listen to your body.

Reflect: Which area of your long-term goal achievement game could use the biggest improvement? What’s a small, but impactful action you can take that will help you improve in that category? Can you start today?

Those Feelings Though

Published on March 3, 2022

What could possibly feel better than getting that new car?

Or that new phone?

Or those new shoes?

…The answer?

Whatever we decide we’re going to feel better about.

That’s the thing about feelings—they’re signals created by us as a result of what we tell ourselves about the world.

“I’m the type of person who always rocks the latest.” Versus: “I’m the type of person who knows how to rock whatever I have.”

Once we realize that our feelings are a byproduct of the stories we tell ourselves we can begin to move our pens differently—as the author of our story—and better influence the feelings that result.

Becoming More Useful By Practicing Uselessness

Published on February 26, 2022

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.

That Painful Thing

Published on February 19, 2022

You know what hurts more than doing that painful thing now?

Doing that painful thing later.

It’ll be the same painful thing, but add to it all of the painful thinking between now and then and stack it all on your shoulders?

Yeah, I don’t know who needs to hear this, but just do that painful thing now.

Your shoulders could do without all of that extra weight.

The Marathon Of Your Life

Published on February 16, 2022

Running a marathon is hard.

Taking one stride, however, is easy.

The reason marathons are hard is because they are composed of around 39,733 consecutive strides.

Taking that many strides in a row will take an incredible toll on even the most fit amongst us.

And to those who aren’t fit, prepared, or mentally calloused enough (as David Goggins would say)—taking that many strides in a row simply isn’t possibly.

Until it is.

See, most of us are smack in the middle of marathons right now.

They are the marathons of our life. For example:

  • We’re on day 47 of our 2022 goal streaks.
  • We’re on day 707 of managing our mental health amidst a global pandemic.
  • We’re on day _____ of our careers/educations (I’m on day ~6,022 of being a professional Martial Arts Instructor).

And we have a lifetime of strides ahead of us.

If we start running too fast on any of these days, we’ll impact our performance on the following days.

If we succumb to distraction and comfort and stop taking strides at all, we’ll never finish our marathons.

And while cheering other people on from the sidelines can be fun and rewarding—it pales in comparison to the joy and reward that comes from crossing the finish line ourselves.

The average person lives 25,915 days.

This is your marathon.

Once you identify what you want your strides to represent—your life’s task becomes easy.

Just one stride each day to contribute to the beautiful accumulation of strides that is your marathon.

And no sense in rushing to this ending (your death).

Better would be to find ways to maximally align with and enjoy each stride.

Godspeed.

Maybe

Published on February 11, 2022 
Maybe great moods
Aren't something we arrive in
Maybe they're something we figure out.

Maybe great days
Aren’t something we have
Maybe they’re something we make.

Maybe great lives
Aren't something we're born with
Maybe they're something we create with what we're given.