The byproduct of desire is discontentment.
You cannot be discontent AND happy.
But, you CAN be content and focused on growth.
Don’t let discontent guide your life—it’s miserable.
Focus on what fills you up instead.
And let your curiosity, enthusiasm, and generosity lead the way.
Gratitude is usually about appreciating all that we have.
What if, to take gratitude further, we appreciated all that we didn’t have, too?
Things like:
This exercise will at least 100x your gratitude list.
Not that it needed any extending in the first place.
We’re all given a finite number of moments to live.
The moment that you’ve currently made it to, also happens to be the precise moment when it all ended in another person’s story.
Now is a gift.
One that so many others would have done ANYTHING to have back.
Live like you mean it.
Your hearing is as good as your ears. Hearing aids can help with that.
Your sight is as good as your eyes. Glasses and contacts can help with that.
Your life is as good as your mindset. Art, music, books, videos, nature, mantra, writing, therapy, mentors, exercise, relaxing, initiative, laughter, kindness, presence, podcasts, gratitude, journaling, having fun, meditation, forgiveness, compassion, speaking up, aiming higher, slowing down, self-discipline, healthy eating, curating media, embracing flaws, working harder, working smarter, helping friends, helping strangers, doing what’s hard, making things easier, athletic endeavors, community service, taking more breaks, building new habits, getting better sleep, minimizing resistance, embracing spontaneity, establishing boundaries, accepting responsibility, eliminating expectations, befriending better people, redefining what you desire, cutting back on obligations, venturing into the unknown, reprioritizing your priorities, saying “No” when you want to, saying “Yes” when you’re scared to, eliminating all comparison to others, letting go of what’s outside of your control, focusing more energy on what’s inside your control, immersing yourself in wisdom—
—can help with that.
Maybe not all at once, of course. But a few at a time? Undoubtedly.
Order doesn’t matter. Making mindset a priority is what matters. If you don’t, it’s like expecting ears to get better without aids or eyes to get better without glasses.
The more we associate movement to work the less likely we are to do it.
When you look at kids, movement is natural.
They run, skip, and jump without any mental resistance or worries at all—all while being told that they need to calm down and “stop,” by adults.
How ironic, that when we get old, we are told we aren’t moving enough and that we need to start running, skipping, and jumping more.
…And then end up paying huge sums of money for boot camp trainers, fitness guides, and programs that’ll hopefully, somehow, maybe retrain our brains to overcome the mental resistance and worries that were once non-existent.
Maybe, we could learn a thing or two from kids.
Maybe, if we stopped looking at exercise as an obligation and looked at it as an expression of bodily freedom, we’d more joyfully move our way to health without so many daily, mental battles and wars.
Rather than trying desperately to wake up earlier, focus on going to bed earlier.
There’s so much advice focused around “30 minutes earlier,” “5am club,” “rising before the sun,” and while I’m not arguing that it isn’t great if you can do that—what’s not great is subtracting sleep time from already sleep-deprived souls.
Prioritize getting a full night of sleep before you try prioritizing early rising.
My dog plays with her toys until she gets bored.
And then she could care less about them.
It’s only when I take one of them away that she suddenly cares again.
And cares a whole lot.
We are so much the same.
We don’t really care about what we have until it’s gone.
If only we could enjoy what we have like it was already taken, maybe we wouldn’t have to get things taken before we could truly enjoy.