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Category: Living Well

How To Upgrade The Quality Of Your Life In 1 Hour

Published on August 5, 2021

You’re naïve if you think the media you consume doesn’t affect your mental health.

Just like you’re naïve if you think the food you consume doesn’t affect your physical health.

What do you think happens when you consume too much bite-sized, sugar-coated, empty-calorie content?

Probably the same thing that happens when you consume too much bite-sized, sugar-coated, empty-calorie food.

If you want your mind to be healthy and fit, you have to treat the media you consume the same way you’d treat the food you’d consume if you wanted to keep your body healthy and fit.

For food, you already know that if it’s in the kitchen, you’re probably going to eat it. Likewise, if the media is in your field of vision, you’re probably going to consume it.

Want to immediately upgrade the quality of your life in one hour?

Step 1: Unfollow, block, mute, and otherwise remove any and all sources of highly processed, click-baity, shallow content.

Step 2: Follow, subscribe, befriend, and otherwise immerse yourself in sources of nutrient dense, clean, trustworthy content.

You can do this for people, brands, and ads alike—for every media platform.

I know of no better way to disproportionately upgrade the quality of your life in as little time.

Big media isn’t going away. Vilifying big media for being sources of shallow content is lazy and irresponsible. About as helpful as vilifying grocery stores for carrying processed foods.

Those who take their media diet seriously will enjoy the same results as the person who takes their food diet seriously.

Ready to upgrade? I hope so. Take an hour and get to it.

The Perfect First Line

Published on August 4, 2021

I strongly disliked writing in school.

Mostly because I wanted to write my final copy on the first try.

Here’s how I remember most of my essay questions going: (1) Spend 75% of my time thinking about how the hell to write the perfect first line. (2) See another student hand in their essay and realize I was almost out of time. (3) Freak out! (4) Forget about the opening line and just start spewing everything I knew about the question before time was up. (5) Leave last.

It’s amazing how much more I got done when I stopped worrying about the perfect first line.

And later, when I learned how to accept the idea of rough drafts, suddenly, writing became a whole lot easier and much more enjoyable. Who knew?

Maybe if we learned how to accept “rough drafts” in life and dropped the idea of needing to start things “perfectly,” life would become a lot easier, too.

A Whole Slice Of Pie

Published on August 2, 2021

If you love what you do, you will never work a day in your life.

But, don’t let the love for what you do be your only priority.

Finding and committing to the right work is important, but living a balanced life filled with family, friends, and other non-work related experiences… is more important.

Three areas worth considering when thinking about fulfillment in life are growth, connection, and contribution.

Here’s the thing, if you’re one of the lucky ones who feels like the work they’re doing is helping them grow as a person, connect with beautiful minds, and give back to a greater good—you may feel like you’ve hit the fulfillment tri-fecta!

What you’d be missing, however, is your growth, connection, and contribution as a father/ mother/ husband/ wife/ son/ daughter/ brother/ sister/ friend/ lover/ grandmother/ grandfather/ uncle/ aunt/ cousin/ neighbor/ niece/ nephew...

Your growth, connection, contribution as an employee/ employer is but one dimension to the fulfillment whole.

And a whole slice of pie is not the same as a whole pie.

Stop Waiting To Be Saved

Published on July 31, 2021

You’ll always be disappointed if you’re always waiting for some big force to save you.

  • A letter from the government saying all of your debt has been forgiven.
  • For all of the demeaning people in your life to suddenly become compassionate.
  • The “magic pill” to finally be invented so you no longer have to exercise or eat well.

When you stop expecting these things to happen, suddenly, there’s no longer any disappointment. Just a refocused use of energy from what’s out of your control (government, people, metabolism, etc.) to what’s within. Now, you’re mental energy can be devoted to:

  • A clearly budgeted and well-thought out financial plan to tackle the debt you’re in.
  • A strategy for cutting out demeaning people and including more compassionate folks.
  • A ritual that allows you to eat well and exercise in enjoyable and long-term focused ways.

If you find yourself disappointed often, it might be because you’re waiting to be saved.

Save yourself.

Are You A Leader?

Published on July 30, 2021

Leadership is influence—nothing more and nothing less.

And if you interact with people, guess what? You influence them.

You can’t interact with someone and not influence them.

Therefore, it’s time you started looking at yourself as a leader.

This, in and of itself, has the ability to change your whole demeanor.

Next, you must carefully reflect on how you’ve been using your influence.

  • Are you influencing people to become better versions of themselves or worse?
  • Are you using your influence to promote more good in the world or harm?
  • Are your means of influencing based in love or hate?

It’s time we stopped looking at leadership as a role reserved for a select few.

It’s a role that each of us gets to embody in full each day.

The question simply becomes: will you own it?

Smile First

Published on July 29, 2021

Imagine coming across someone who was looking at their reflection in the mirror, without moving, for a considerable length of time. And you ask them what they’re doing, to which they reply, “I’m waiting for my reflection to smile.”

You’d probably chalk that person up as crazy.

But, what’s the difference between that person and the person waiting for a considerable length of time for their circumstances to change? Staring at your circumstances unwilling to make the first move until your circumstances smile back at you—is the same thing!

Circumstances change when you change.

Smile first.

It’s Not The Axe’s Fault

Published on July 24, 2021

Not needing anybody to motivate you is one of the most liberating feelings in the world.

  • You get to exercise—without needing a trainer, accountability partner, or motivational video.
  • You get to eat clean—without needing a meal-planner, slap from a loved one, or body goals video.
  • You get to work—without needing external incentives, pushes from your peers, or threats from your boss.

Having self-motivation saves time, money, and energy.

But, it also takes time, money, and energy—particularly at the outset. At the times when all you want to do is utilize the motivation that can be taken from surrounding external sources. When all you want to do is dive in while you’re hot.

But, here’s the trick: you have to resist that urge.

The same way the lumberjack must resist the urge to chop the tree with a dull axe.

See, most people just grab the axe and start hacking away. And they burn themselves out, fail to make much progress, and curse the axe for not being good enough.

When what’s really required isn’t hacking—but sharpening.

When you take the time required to sharpen the mind and internalize principles that are intrinsically motivating, you’ll be free of the external needs altogether.

And you’ll start chopping through days worth of trees while everybody else is still cursing their axe.