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Matt Hogan's Blog Posts

What If Mental Health Didn’t Need Its Own Time Block…?

Published on October 23, 2024

Today’s going to be a busy day.

You have tasks that need to get done; people who need to be cared for; projects that need to be worked on; deadlines that need to be met; chores that need to get completed; bills that need to be paid; and not to forget—you have mental health that needs to be prioritized amidst it all…

Now, you could gas yourself up, paint the picture of you collapsing onto the couch at the end of your busy day where you’ll *finally* be able to relax, hit the ground running, and rush your way to reaching that destination asap…

Or… you could paint a totally different kind of picture instead…

…One where relaxing doesn’t happen at the end of your day… but one where relaxing happens throughout your day.

One where you take your time commuting one location to the next… where you slowly, but deliberately complete tasks… where you bring a calm presence to the people you cross paths with… where you slow hustle your way to excellence in all of the things you need to do rather than rush, short cut, and scrape by.

Because what you might find when you paint the “take your time” type of picture for yourself… is that your mental health might not need its own reserved time block within your days… because it will get taken care of in how you go about your days instead.

Not that there’s anything wrong with a little mental health break or siesta.

…But, there might be something a little more right with aligning mental health with your lifestyle as a whole instead.

Insinuating Remarks

Published on October 22, 2024

I uploaded a picture quote today that read, “Strange, isn’t it? You know yourself better than anyone else, yet you crumble at the words of someone who hasn’t even lived a second of your life. Focus on your own voice; it’s the only one that matters.”

…Not even one second of your life.

And yet, we crumble from a singular, insinuating remark.

It really is strange, isn’t it?

Why does this happen? Or maybe better yet, why do we allow this to happen?

One answer is that while, yes, we should know ourselves better than anyone else… in a lot of ways, we’re still figuring ourselves out. And those insinuating comments meander their way into our complex thought processes and become virus’ of the mind that infect the software of our brain.

…Unless or until we protect it.

How do we do that you ask?

By doing the necessary inner work that’ll upload firewalls and security checks to visiting comments and thoughts. This might involve 10-30 minute mindfulness scans and debugging sessions. Or downloading what’s been uploaded to your mind at the end of the day, writing about it, and cleaning up any infected files or malware attempts. Or proactively blocking sources of malware and spam—be it people, media profiles/sites, or places.

By focusing more on your voice—your cleaned up, uninfected, firewall protected voice—you can insulate yourself from these type of common, everyday, modern attacks and become the type of presence that doesn’t crumble, but stands smirking at the lame attempts of insinuating words because you see them (finally) for what they really are.

…Attempts to infect and control you that are baseless and really don’t matter.

What To Do When You Realize You’re On The Wrong Train

Published on October 21, 2024

“If you get on the wrong train, get off at the nearest station, the longer it takes you to get off, the more expensive the return trip will be.”

Japanese Proverb

It’s pretty easy to see how this relates to life.

Once you realize you’re on the wrong path—with a person, a behavior, an educational or career path etc.—take action as soon as possible to get off and adjust.

…Duh.

The harder to understand piece to this advice is the “once you realize” part.

…Because it isn’t always immediately obvious that we’re on the wrong train in life. Or what starts out feeling like the right train, slowly and so subtly that we don’t even realize it, becomes the wrong train. Or we miss the station we’re supposed to exit at and board a different train and find ourselves several stations in the wrong direction.

The real key to properly applying this analogy to your life is in understanding how you can stay on top of your realizing.

An excellent place to start is to do your homework up front: Are you sure this train is heading in a direction you want to head? Are you sure this is the best train to get you there? How sure are you that you can trust the sources that are giving you this information?

And an excellent ongoing practice to have once you’ve boarded a train is to do checkpoints along the way: Am I still heading in my ideal direction? Am I sure there isn’t another train that can get me where I want to go faster? Do these landmarks match what the direction of this train promised?

What’s Now

Published on October 20, 2024

While playing football this morning, one of the quarterbacks commented on how upset he was that he threw a couple of interceptions.

While playing basketball shortly thereafter, guys would visibly and viscerally get upset when they missed a series of shots in a row.

And while talking to a friend, it became evident to me that I was still upset about a situation that happened days ago.

In each of these situations, the past was being carried into the present—and it was affecting all of our abilities to perform our best.

Learning how to leave these past moments in the past and enter each present moment as its own refreshed opportunity—is nothing short of a superpower.

And the best way to do this is to learn how to stay calm when mistakes are made, clearly take from them the lessons you’re able to extract, and breathe yourself confidently back into the present.

What’s done is done. What’s now can either be a darker night or a rising sun.

P.s. In case you missed it, you can read the best of what I posted to MoveMe Quotes last week here.

“You’re Falling Apart”

Published on October 20, 2024

“Just this morning. Over the past few weeks I’ve had a sudden onset of health things; insane poison parsnip huge blister on my foot, Basal skin cell cancer successfully removed from my temple twice, emergency root canal, two crowns on my teeth, and finally this morning (and last night’s prep for) a colonoscopy. ‘You’re falling apart,’ was the comment from my younger workmate. ‘We’ve a lot to be grateful for,’ was the comment from my mother in law. Why is that an accomplishment? At 30 you start to feel aches and pains. At 40 you realize you have to fight just to not atrophy. And a 50 you keep at it and kind of just cross your fingers that you’ve sufficiently shifted the bell curve of health fortune in your favour.”

Peter A.B. Marshall

Sheesh. What a mindset shift.

From “I’m falling apart…” to “I have so much to be grateful for” in a single comment.

Because what is “falling apart,” but a couldn’t-be-more-real-statement of what it means to be alive.

Life is always moving towards chaos; towards disorder; towards ‘falling apart’—it’s the Second Law of Thermodynamics. And while this may be wildly frustrating and messy… it’s a reminder of one thing that couldn’t be more comforting and clear: that we’re alive.

…And what a wildly humbling and beautiful gift that is.

Most People Get Step 1 Wrong

Published on October 18, 2024

You at your absolute best isn’t something that just happens.

It’s something you need to reverse engineer your way to.

And step 1 isn’t to start a new diet or hit an insane workout.

Step 1 is to figure out what you at your absolute best looks and feels like.

Most people have a vague idea that’s painted abstractly in the back of their mind that’s clouded over by unrelated, distractionary, impeding monkey-mind thoughts. And upon closer inspection, most people just have a cut and pasted montage of other people from across the internet who appear to be living their best life that looks good enough for them.

…And what I think is this isn’t good enough for you.

In fact, I’m of the mindset that you can’t even begin to sculpt the image or feel of your absolute best self until you’ve traversed the landscape of your mind from the forefront—where it’s clouded and filled with unrelenting monkey mind thoughts—to the back… where the unfinished sculpture stands.

Once you understand this, you realize it takes 10, 20, maybe even 30 minutes of undistracted inner travel before you can even begin to work on the look and feel of your absolute best self.

Cutting magazine pictures, saving social media images, and watching short form videos can be helpful—but it’s superficial. And the idea of them goes away when they go away (and you’re back to monkey mind).

Sculpting takes quality time—and sculpting is exactly what the process of realizing your absolute best self should look and feel like. Lengthy mental commutes, tough chiseling decisions, an ongoing/ hard-to-finish project… that becomes more meaningful and real every visit.

A Whole New Lease

Published on October 17, 2024

I finished paying my car off last month.

This is my first month without a car payment in years.

And, like clockwork, I downloaded the cars app and started browsing new cars.

I don’t need a new car. I’m in an excellent position with my current car. It’s an excellent brand in excellent condition and is expected to continue running excellently for years and years to come.

…And yet, I still had that urge to search for upgrades.

To get something newer, with fewer miles, that’s all electric…

Something that might not even cost me that much if I get a good enough price for my car and a good enough deal on a new one…

…Isn’t it interesting how that works?

How excited and thrilled and fully satisfied we feel at the outset…

And then how all of a sudden, once we own that thing or have used it for a while, something changes inside…

Because it isn’t the thing that changes—not really at least.

It’s something else that changes that’s actually completely within our control…

And that thing is… our perspective.

And my current thought to myself is, if I can do some inner work to change my perspective back… to appreciate my car like it was my first month with it once again, it’ll be as though I’m taking out a whole new lease on my car—without taking on any kind of new lease at all (which is my favorite kind of lease).

…Which is how it works for taking out a whole new lease on life, too.