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Category: Living Well

Thinking Better Thoughts Doesn’t Just Happen

Published on October 6, 2021

Thoughts are as much outside of your control as they are inside of your control.

It works very much the same as breathing.

When you’re conscious of your mind or breath, you can actively control them.

But, when you’re no longer conscious of them, they carry on without you.

This is why you can’t just demand your mind to start producing better thoughts.

That would be like demanding your lungs to start delivering oxygen better.

You have to improve the thought-producing machine as you would the oxygen-delivering machine(s).

Which doesn’t happen after one exercise session (for either).

It happens after many.

Pace Your Brain

Published on October 3, 2021

Most people never talk about pace when it comes to learning.

Most of what I hear is about consuming as much as possible in the shortest amount of time possible (e.g. 2x speed while watching YouTube videos or listening to podcasts).

Pace matters just as much in learning as it does in running a marathon.

Move too quickly through the information and you’ll burnout and resent the process.

Move too slowly and you’ll bore yourself to death (and resent the process).

Find your sweet spot and you’ll become a learner for life.

You Don’t Start Good—You Become Good

Published on September 25, 2021

Let me assure you that approximately none of us start “good” at anything.

Take meditating for example. Expecting to be “good” at meditating when you first start is like expecting to be “good” at Martial Arts when you come to your first class.

The point isn’t to arrive “good”—the point is to start where you are and improve.

Besides the rare few who are “born enlightened,” I’m of the opinion that all of us have busy, irrational, crazed monkey minds which make meditating exceptionally hard.

…Which is precisely why we should be spending time practicing it.

What we need to do isn’t *not* meditate because its hard. What we need to do is better manage our expectations.

Meditating isn’t about closing our eyes and being able to experience a magical ceasing of all incoming thoughts. Not a chance.

It’s about stopping the flow of incoming information and allowing what’s there to settle.

When I meditate, I spend probably less than a minute out of twenty actually free from thinking. This is an excellent day of meditation for me.

In fact, any day I practice meditating is an excellent day of meditating—because I practiced it.

Get it?

The practice is the reward. Just like in Martial Arts. What are belts but an external motivation tactic to encourage training?

The end goal (black belt) is simply a motivation tactic that’s designed to get you to practice.

So, if you want to become a “black belt” in meditation (or anything), humble yourself and start practicing like a white belt.

Create A New Life Event Today

Published on September 23, 2021

If you want to have better evenings, take better care of your mornings.

And if you want to have better mornings, well, take better care of your evenings.

This is to simply say: everything in your day is interconnected.

Morning to night, night to morning; task one to task two, task two back to task one again.

Once you recognize this, you’ll see why now is as good a time as any for improvement.

Where you start improvement in the timeline of your day is irrelevant. THAT you start is what matters. Waiting for the “right moment” or a more “convenient time” (like, New Years) is merely an excuse to not have to change or do the work.

The idea that the future will be better for improvement in some way is simply false. You know when the best time for improvement is? Yeah… NOW!

Because how you handle this moment will be directly correlated to how your next moment will feel. And, mind-bogglingly enough, how all of your future moments will feel, too.

Because just like we’re only six degrees of separation away from each other, so, too, are the events of our lives only a few degrees of separation apart.

Think about it: you could probably trace the key events that happened in your life, that led you to the feel of this exact moment, on your fingers.

So why not create a new event today that will position the future you in a better place?

After all, further delay on improvement will only continue to delay your improvement.

And why on earth would you want to do that?

If Momentum Is Not Your Friend, You’re Foolish

Published on September 22, 2021

Momentum is either your greatest ally or your greatest foe.

Learn how to use momentum in your favor and the tasks of your day will topple over seamlessly, one to the next, like a perfectly aligned series of dominoes.

One push and momentum will take care of the rest.

Ignore momentum and the tasks of your day will topple and stop erratically, requiring you to keep re-pushing the next series of dominoes again and again and again.

For me, getting out of bed in the morning is the initial push of my dominoes which hits:

  • Shower—which hits,
  • Workout—which hits,
  • Breakfast—which hits,
  • Reading—which hits,
  • Driving to work.

The dominoes are beautifully ordered and adequately spaced. All I have to do is get out of bed at the right time and the rest feels automatic.

There’s no guessing. No setting up dominoes as I go. No reshuffling the dominoes after I’ve already tipped the first one… It’s all premeditated, sequential, and intentional.

And once I arrive to work, of course, the next chain of dominoes gets pushed—and so forth, as the day goes on.

Where most people run into momentum issues, is when they don’t take the time to properly set up their dominoes (tasks) ahead of time and/or don’t have them properly spaced out (time management).

If you look at your day in this way, I suspect you’ll find where the missing “dominoes” and irregular spacings lie. Adjust accordingly.

Having momentum as a foe, to be frank, is a stupid waste of time, energy, and effort.

Starting from stopped is always harder than keeping the momentum going.

Momentum, meet reader. Reader, meet momentum.

Now, be friends.

Feelings > Possessions (Part 2)

Published on September 21, 2021

The feelings we crave the most are connected to the feelings that hurt us the most.

The desire to feel:

  • Cool is connected to feeling uncool
  • Admired is connected to feeling un-admirable
  • Impressive is connected to feeling unimpressive

The feelings that pain us are like emotional wounds and the opposite feelings act like the remedy.

Possessions are like band-aids—they only temporarily cover up wounds. And they do nothing to address the pain itself.

If we want to truly heal, then we need to do the same kind of work that our body would when wounded. We need to:

  1. Clot the area and stop picking scabs: The first step is always: don’t make it worse. We need to stop feeding our minds toxic, belittling, hateful information.
  2. Send white blood cells to fight infection: Just like the body can become infected, so, too, can the mind. Every positive, healthy, healing thought and action we can facilitate is like a white blood cell being sent out to fight infection. The more the better.
  3. Create collagen to form new tissue: As the worsening stops, infection is steadily fought, and healing actions continue—pain will subside and new thought processes will form.
  4. Let scars heal: The scar might itch and demand more picking at first, but stay disciplined—eventually it will fade. After a few years, the scar may even disappear completely.

The bottom line: the intensity of our desire for pleasurable feelings is proportional to the intensity of our painful feelings. The more we heal our pains, the less we will need those remedies disguised as opposing feelings.

And we’ll finally be able to rip all the band-aids off.

Feelings > Possessions

Published on September 20, 2021

Why do people really want the possessions they do?

I can tell you straight away it isn’t because of the possessions themselves.

In fact, in most cases, what people really want is to feel a certain kind of way.

And getting that possession, in their mind, is how they feel it.

People want to feel impressive so they buy the new iPhone.

People want to feel cool so they buy the Gucci slides.

People want to feel admired so they buy the BMW.

The problem, of course, with buying things in order to acquire feelings is two fold:

  • One, what’s impressive/cool/admired today, won’t be tomorrow. You’ll be stuck in a never ending loop of always needing to upgrade in order to keep reaching forever fleeting feelings.
  • Two, the people who make you feel impressive/cool/admired because of possessions and not innate characteristics, won’t be there tomorrow either. They will be just as fleeting as the possessions themselves.

That’s why, the real game isn’t about acquiring the most expensive possessions.

The real game is about learning how to acquire the feelings in spite of the expensive possessions.

Because while band-aids have their role, they should never be prioritized over the main goal: healing—so that band-aids are no longer needed at all.