A beautiful home isn’t something that happens—it’s something you make happen.
A beautiful mindset isn’t something that happens—it’s something you make happen.
A beautiful life isn’t something that happens—it’s something you make happen.
If you let life happen to you, the byproduct will be a mess—for life always moves towards chaos.
Beauty is the byproduct of taking those given messes and turning them into something you can be proud of.
Daily affirmation: “I am not building a Lego house.”
Continued: “I am building a skyscraper. I am building a towering and intricate legacy of work that deeply reflects a long-lasting and firm commitment to steel, brick, and mortar—not cheap, plastic toys.”
Repeat as needed when things get tough.
The antidote to harm: Love.
The antidote to hate: Love.
The antidote to indifference: Love.
The antidote to fear: Love.
The antidote to cruelty: Love.
Be a walking antidote to the poisons of the world.
The Urgent is an expert line-cutter.
Each day, as The Important graciously lines itself up to be prioritized, The Urgent cuts right in front and boots it to the back of the line.
It does this over and over again, day-in and day-out.
Don’t allow this type of behavior in your house.
For what you have to realize about The Important is that it’s patient—it thinks there will always be time. It assumes that if The Urgent needs to go through all of that trouble to plot, plan, fuss, and meander its way to the front of the line, it might as well get the priority.
But, the reality is, there won’t always be time. And The Urgent will always think it’s more important than The Important. That’s its nature.
As the authority of your life, it’s your responsibility to recognize this and put clear boundaries up around prioritization.
Sometimes an urgent cut in line may be justified. But, there should rarely ever be a day when you don’t—in some way, shape, or form—work on what’s important.
.…They don’t.
21/30/60/90 days isn’t the amount of time it takes for a hard task to become easy.
…It’s the amount of time it takes for you to not forget to do the hard task(s).
Many people get this twisted.
Hard tasks, generally speaking, never get easier.
The 21/30/60/90 day mark is simply how long it takes for you to integrate a new habit into your lifestyle—it’s the getting to and the starting of the task that gets easier.
Remember this the next time you commit to a new lifestyle habit.
Day 22/31/61/91 is going to be just as hard as day 1. You’re delusional if you think otherwise.
The key is to make sure that the pace you’re setting for yourself at the outset is one that you’ll be able to maintain far beyond just 21/30/60/90 days.
Good measure is to imagine how you’ll feel about your new lifestyle habit on day 9,000.
Do you think you’ll still be doing the task in question?
Proceed accordingly.
Undesired emotions left untapped, swell.
The more those undesired emotions swell, the worse they become.
With mindfulness, we can tap into that swollen reservoir and give those emotions the path they need to flow.
This path allows the body to drain those unpleasant feelings, energy-guzzling thoughts, and hazy perspectives that make the emotions so undesirable.
But, worth noting: this doesn’t make them “bad” or “negative.” For the very nature of an undesired emotion is to signal to us that something is wrong.
And knowing that something is wrong is vital for our survival as humans.
So pay your undesired emotions some mind. Give them the light of your attention. Allow them some space in your day. The longer the emotion(s) get(s) ignored—the worse that “wrong” thing will get.
Remember, once they feel heard, they will flow.
Which will allow space for the opposite type of emotion to grow.
And this is what allows for the real transformations to take place.
If we don’t give poignant emotions space to move, they collect and become static—like a lake.
This is a problem because lakes have no means of filtration. They just collect and hold—trash, toxicity, diseases, and all. This isn’t a good formula for life.
Life is movement. Death is no movement.
The problem escalates, of course, when what opens up into our lake is a sewage drain that pours in more toxicity via news, media, gossip, drama, and hate.
…And then we wonder why we can become so overwhelmingly anxious, irritable, and befuddled inside?!
The solution, then, is to become an emotional river instead.
Rather than allowing what’s emotionally swelling to be suppressed, we should find ways we can give those feelings space to move.
Space that doesn’t come from distraction (anything that pulls our attention away from our emotional awareness is a distraction), but space that comes from a place of careful inward mindfulness.
Writing, meditating, therapeutic conversations, etc—are all great examples.
And just a few minutes a day can give emotions the space they need to keep flowing through (and eventually out from) our systems.