What an interesting question to contemplate: “What does this space (that I’ve designed) say about me?”
And maybe more interesting—a question I’ve been contemplating all weekend: “How can I redesign this space so that it speaks to the person I have evolved into and most want to become?”
I’ve been working out of the same office for almost two decades.
And not once have I given it a full design update.
What I’ve done throughout the years is simply add.
I’ve added more and more art to the walls, shoved more and more files into my one cabinet, pinned more and more pictures to the more and more cork boards that I would buy…
And over the past few months, for the first time in those almost two decades… I felt out of place.
…Like where I was working, my office, was no longer accurately depicting who I was, what I was about, and what I wanted the impression to be.
And so this weekend, I gutted it. And I’m re-designing and re-organizing it from the ground up (with my sister’s help). After the work I put in tomorrow, I’ll have invested upwards of 24 hours into this project.
And you know what, I can’t wait to get back in there and keep working on it. Because what I’m doing isn’t work… what I’m doing is evolving in real time.
…And it’s finally rippling outward from just me and into my workspace in a way it never has.
You don’t get amazing people into your life via boring living.
You attract amazing people into your life via exciting living.
And I don’t mean this by anyone else’s definition of “boring” or “exciting” than yours.
You know when you’re living well within your comfort zone, as your unrealized self, doing nothing but consuming behind closed doors.
And equally so, you know when you’re living outside of your comfort zone, as your evolving self, creating and sharing and connecting in the vast landscapes of the world.
The thing is, people want somebody amazing to come into their life to push them into that “exciting” lifestyle. But what we have to realize is, nobody is coming to push us… we have to start living our most exciting lifestyle and, by and by, we’ll attract—we’ll pull—amazing people in.
Not because they saw somebody living in a boring way and made it their mission to make it exciting for them…
…But because they saw somebody living in an exciting way and wanted to join them.
Like fish, we typically grow in proportion to the size of our environment.
Put into a bowl, and we’ll grow bowl-size.
Put into the ocean, and we’ll grow ocean-size.
If you find yourself feeling stuck at “bowl-size,” try swimming into bigger environments. Or focus so much on growing yourself that the bowl-size simply is no longer a good fit.
There’s a whole ocean out there. For all of us. In every field and life dimension.
The question is… what size feels Goldilocks right to you?
“You should take him on a vacation… so that he can best enjoy the time he has left.”
“…Why? So we can forget and drink beers on the beach? …No. No. I’m not doing that. I’m not letting him give up. I’m not giving up. I’ll take him for a walk by the water… so we can talk. I think that’s what he needs most—what he wants most right now. I’ll even help him change is lifestyle so that all the crap gets cut. But quitting isn’t what I want on either of our minds.”
—After hearing a mutual friend’s cancer metastasized and there was nothing more the doctors could do.
I played 3 hours of intense basketball today.
Afterwards, I was spent.
…Walking to my car even felt like a chore.
And as I was driving home, I remembered I still needed to mow the lawn.
…And it felt like pushing a weighted sled at the gym for 45 minutes after running a half marathon.
But what’s interesting is later that night, I watched a legendary DJ set on YouTube that I’ve been meaning to watch for months.
…And for two hours, I danced in front of my TV without so much as a grimace—in fact, it flew by and left me feeling light as a cloud.
It was an incredible reminder that energy follows alignment. And if you’re fighting with yourself for energy, maybe it isn’t your energy levels so much as it’s your energy inhibitors and drains.
…And worth meditating on is how alignment can help fix both.