Don’t overthink it.
Whether it’s a goal, intention, or inclination…
Let your passion guide you; forget about the modern day games that distract you from this focus in any way.
Complicated is the enemy of progress and progress is the *only* game worth playing.
Cheers to keeping it simple, passionate, and progress focused in 2025. 🥂
P.s. The incredibly talented street performer who inspired this post.
Nobody should be more in tune with your needs / desires than you.
And while a shiny new TV or a fresh pair of sneakers might be gifts at the top of your wishlist… there are needs / desires that supersede anything that gets wrapped in a box (or shoved in a bag with some tissue paper on top).
They are specific feelings / experiences that give us a sense of meaning / fulfillment and there’s six of them I want you to consider.
The first pair are certainty vs uncertainty. Too certain and our lives become mundane and vanilla. Too uncertain and we live overly anxious and chronically worried.
The next pair to consider are significance vs connection. When we feel too unique, special, important, different… we feel like outliers and struggle to connect deeply with others. When we feel too connected with others, we can lose our individuality and significance as an individual.
The final pair to consider are growth vs contribution. Focusing too much on growth is selfish—we ignore invaluable opportunities to use what we’ve developed to help others. On the other hand, focusing too much on contribution is counterproductive—we can only give back what we have or have built.
Ideally, we want to have a balance of all of the above in our lives.
The question is, which of the above needs the most work in yours?
Because once you’ve figured out that… the next step is to create the real wishlist. The one that focuses on the things you can do to improve that specific area… and includes the real gifts that’ll make the real dent in your life…
…And not just another person’s wallet.
I do this thing on weekends where I unintentionally stay up way later than usual.
It’s this weird self-sabotaging kind of behavior that’s fueled by this belief that going to bed early on the weekends is lame.
…And/or maybe it’s a reciprocal bounce in the opposite direction of my usual hyper-disciplined lifestyle.
…And/or maybe it’s because the weekends are when I allow myself some extra screen time and it always sucks me in longer than I originally plan.
None-the-less, no matter how exhausted I wake up the next morning or how many times I tell myself I’ll go to bed earlier the next weekend, I find myself zonked out on the couch at the same late times the following weekend.
What’s interesting is that either one, two, all, or none of the above mentioned reasons are at the root of this behavior.
And if I want to solve this challenge, I’ll need to identify the root first.
…Attacking the periphery is like trying to get rid of weeds by only cutting at what’s seen. And we both know that won’t do much to stop weeds from growing right back.
No.
What stops weeds from growing right back is attacking them at the root.
And oftentimes, like a well established weed, it isn’t always immediately obvious where the root is… but, once you’ve narrowed in on it… a focused tug or two is all it really takes to stop it’s continued existence altogether.
…Much better than cutting at what’s seen again and again and again.
P.s. ICYMI you can read the best of what I posted to MoveMe Quotes last week here.
One of my favorite holiday traditions is to Venmo $10 to 10 or so friends and include the following type of message:
“Take this and commit a random act of holiday kindness. Buy someone a coffee or pay for the person behind you in line (or pay it forward to another Venmo friend)… ‘Tis going to be a stressful week for many. Let’s make it a little better for a few.”
What I love about it so much isn’t just the random acts of kindness that get committed from the $10.
…It’s the amount of time each person spends thinking about how they’re going to commit their random act of kindness.
When this idea first made its way to me, the storyteller said her son was given $5 and a very similar message to what I typed above… and he spent 6 months thinking about how he wanted to make the world a little better with that $5.
…Talk about ROI.
Mine? …Ryan Holiday.
Started out as a college dropout at 19.
Turned into a modern day content producing machine—sharing not trends, junk, or click-bait, but uplifting, insightful, timely, grounded, evergreen messages very much needed in our modern world.
He sends out not one, but two daily emails. He publishes longer form articles weekly—many of which have appeared in The New York Times, Forbes, Fast Company, and more. He is the author of 12 best selling books. He does speaking gigs for professional sports teams and fortune 500 companies. He hosts a widely listened to podcast where he regularly interviews greats. He teaches online seminars and courses and creates challenges for people where they can join communities and get live Q&As with him to level up their life. He regularly publishes fresh content to his several social media channels. Not to mention… get this… he has his own brick and mortar bookstore and is happily married with two kids.
…And he’s only 37 years old.
Publicly, I admire this so much. And want to create something like this in my world.
Secretly, I know (think?) this kind of production isn’t possible unless it’s your sole focus. And I love my brick and mortar career too much to make the creation of something like this my sole focus.
…But, seeing this plainly typed out in front of me for the first time (I hadn’t answered this question ever in my life until just now), I can see more clearly in which direction(s) I’d like to head.
Your turn. Answer the above inner work prompt. Send over your any interesting insights or takeaways :)
I was speaking to a parent the other day and we were both commenting on how fast this last year went by.
Like… 2025?! …What??
And not only were we amazed at how fast the year went by… but at how it feels like the years go by faster and faster each year.
One of the reasons for this, I’d say, is that with each year we get busier and busier.
When we contextualize this within the span of a day, you’d see the same pattern. The busier you are, the quicker the day goes by.
The antidote to this then, if you’re looking to better soak in and fully absorb the time of your life, is to deliberately find time when you can un-busy yourself.
Time when you can just sit… and meditate for a little while.
Time when you can just walk… and notice the world you often take for granted.
Time when you can just reflect… and emphasize the happenings of the day, sort through the thoughts of your mind, and solidify key moments that you want to carry with you there forward.
As obvious as it sounds, my feeling is that far too many don’t make time for this.
If you want time to slow down… you have to slow down.
More un-busy time is the path to a more fully experienced year.
One of my best friends became a father today.
And my guess is that it was filled with some of the most present, wholesome, transcendental moments of his entire life.
…Imagine if we could harness this same kind of awe, attention, and energy into more of the moments of our days.
…Because the crazy thing is: we can.