Category: Living Well

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.

Reading By Not Reading

Published on August 11, 2024

In conversation with a few parents the other day, one mom felt that audiobooks didn’t count as reading.

She wanted her son to read book-in-hand, one-word-at-a-time, undistracted, in reality.

…But, why do we read?

Is it so we can exercise our eyes? So we can practice decoding and understanding text? So we can practice being still and concentrating our attention?

Maybe…

But, most importantly I’d say it’s to expand our mind by infecting it with the stories and ideas shared within.

And I’d say there’s absolutely nothing wrong with doing that via audiobook… or via graphic novel… or via kindle… or via classic paper text… or even via listening to someone else read it to you in person.

The problem isn’t the kid not wanting to read IRL books.

The problem is trying to force the kid to obtain the life expanding, mentally nourishing, spiritually evolving ideas buried in books via a medium that doesn’t align with them.

It’s too easy to just go back onto TikTok and scroll your life away instead.

Show them where the real depth of life lies… show them where the worlds of the imaginations can truly go… show them how much better a 20 hour time spent book is vs 20 hours spent watching 5-60 second nonsense videos.

Align; don’t force.

P.s. You can read the best of what I posted to MoveMe Quotes last week here.

A Multi-Dimensional Lifestyle

Published on August 11, 2024

When you get particularly comfortable—be it at home or with a certain group of people or in a specific setting—you’re going to want to stay there.

When you get particularly good at something—be it getting good grades at school, playing a sport, expressing yourself via a craft or activity, doing a job, laddering yourself up in a career—you’re going to want to double down on that thing.

When you settle into a particular lifestyle—be it how you eat, how you move, how you screen time, how you socialize, how you spend, or how you destress—you’re going to want to replay it again each day.

And while hanging around a certain group of people or doubling down on a skill you’re good at or settling into a specific dietary routine isn’t a bad thing—and there are certainly cases where it can be an excellent thing—today’s reminder is one of living a multi-dimensional lifestyle.

Spending too much of your life where you’re comfortable leads to complacency and denies growth opportunities.

Doing only what you’re good at prevents you from exploring other possible skillsets and practicing the art of being a humble beginner.

Living life the same way every day leads to narrow-mindedness, lack of experiential learning, and missed moments of serendipity via spontaneity.

Aim to live a multi-dimensional life.

A life that’s comfortable, but challenges you in fresh ways each day.

A life that’s centered around your strengths, but keeps you humbly dabbling in your weaknesses.

A life that’s grounded in routine, but sprinkles in spontaneous moments.

A life built from a solid foundation that branches outward in curious ways.

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.

The Greater The Rush, The Greater The Regret

Published on August 6, 2024

To rush implies a present desire to get to a future moment as quickly as possible.

…Which happens at the expense of the present moment in proportion to how much you’re rushing.

In other words, big rushing = big dissociation from the present moment… little rushing = little dissociation.

Living only happens in the present.

And while, yes, it’s still possible (and common) to dissociate from the present moment even when you’re not rushing—it can’t be ignored that not rushing is a necessary precursor to presence.

The pickle so many of us find ourselves in is that modern society is built upon a foundation of rush.

We must hurry to learn—so we can get into a competitive, name-brand college.

We must hurry to earn—so we can impress our peers with our lifestyle.

We must hurry to settle—so we can cross house, spouse, kids, and dog off our life checklists.

And so on.

The problem with this is that the foundation of life is built upon a foundation of presence—moments where you truly feel the experience of being alive.

And when the foundation of society is built on a foundation in conflict with that of life… we can have problems—namely, ends filled with lots of regret.

But, if we can break away from this societal mold and create our own little foundation of presence in our lives… we can change the direction of our lives drastically.

P.s. I wrote a guide to help you live a life with less regret. More on that here.

Buying Life

Published on August 5, 2024

Money is not the currency of life—energy is.

The greater your energy levels, the more living you get to “buy.”

The lower your energy levels, the less you’ll be able to afford before crashing and disassociating from life altogether.

One of the unique modern day dilemmas we face is that screens can stimulate us awake for extended periods of time even though we’re exhausted and crave sleep.

I’ve been experiencing this first hand.

I’ll be absolutely exhausted at the end of a long day, crash on the couch, and stay up WAY past my normal bed time watching a show or YouTube series simply because the stimulant of the screen distracts me from noticing and acting on my exhaustion.

…Which causes me to borrow energy from the next day (because I don’t get a full and proper sleep), which leads to less life I’ll be able to “buy,” which hopefully doesn’t lead to more screen time but likely will, which perpetuates the problem.

If you want to get more out of life, don’t obsess over hoarding money, obsess over maximizing your energy levels each and every day.

We buy life in energy we can bring to present moments—not in money we’re going to spend “one day.”

P.s. Here’s the best of what I posted to MoveMe Quotes last week.