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Tag: Analogies

Passing On Pain

Healing doesn’t come from passing on pain.

At first glance, the idea of taking pain, packaging it up, and giving it away sounds sensible.

In the same way that taking garbage that’s overflowing, packaging it up, and sending it out to the curb might relieve your nose of the pain it’s stench thrusts upon you when you near it.

But, pain isn’t garbage that you can just dump off at the curb for another person to carry.

In fact, pain isn’t something that’s removable at all.

Pain is the crack in your house’s foundation. It’s the constant flooding of your basement. It’s the leaky roof, the broken plumbing, or the rotting wood.

It’s structural.

And there’s no moving out of this house. This body, this mind, this spirit—is the only real house you’ll ever have.

The only way this house heals, is if you do what’s required to get it fixed.

The information for healing is out there—for houses and for humans. It has never been more accessible.

It’s the solving—the doing of the work—that’s hard. And if you’re not up to the task of fixing something structural with your house alone—just admit it!

…And then get someone who can help.

Ideally, someone who knows how to fix structural problems and is a professional in their field.

You wouldn’t hire “just anybody” to fix a crack in your house’s foundation, right? So, why would you ever consider doing that for your most sacred home?

Ignoring structural problems and spewing the pain of it all on others—is no solution at all.

And only adds more wear to the houses of those in your own neighborhood.


This post became the introduction for: 28 Poetic Quotes from Inward by Yung Pueblo on Healing, Pain, and Love

Traveling Light Into 2022

Everything you’re carrying… you’ve picked up.

Maybe put some of that down before the New Year, eh?

Achieving goals—moving forward—becomes a heck of a lot easier when you’re traveling light.

Living Your Dream Life

Living your dream life won’t happen accidentally, just like becoming a black belt won’t happen accidentally.

It won’t happen just because you want it to.

It won’t happen even if you beg it to.

Living a life of your dreams—becoming a black belt—only happens on purpose.

And not just after being on purpose for one day, one month, or even one year.

Trying to balance the entire weight of your lifetime on such a small foundation of purposeful action isn’t realistic. Solid foundations take time.

And unless there’s a solid foundation, a quickly-realized-life-of-your-dreams will quickly collapse.

So, rather than trying to hack your way to a six-figure passive income—commit to the long-term game you’re playing and learn how to love playing the game.

Because what you’ll eventually realize is that loving the game is more closely related to living the life of your dreams than “winning” the game ever will be.

Complain Less. Paint More.

Life is a piece of art that we slowly create over time.

We don’t get to choose the paint, but we get to choose what to paint.

Choosing not to paint, to complain about your paint, to curse your paint, to hate your paint, to compare and mope about your paint vs. other people’s paint—to expend energy doing anything that involves not painting your masterpiece—is a waste. Period.

Complain less about what colors you’ve been granted and focus more on how you’ll create a masterpiece with those very colors instead.

There aren’t any colors or color combinations that can’t be turned into masterpieces.

Never forget it.

On To The Next

When you’re done with an application on your computer, you close it.

If you keep that program open as you open other ones, you’ll slowly start seeing a progressive lag in performance.

Especially if you leave a big program like Photoshop open.

The same is true for your mind.

Close applications before you move on to the next.

Smarts And Systems

The people who work at Lexus aren’t more tired at the end of the day than those who work at Ford.

And neither are the people who work at Rolex versus the people who work at Fossil.

Creating a higher quality product isn’t about effort.

It’s the people who learn how to work smarter, not harder, that find ways to get ahead.

It’s the people who learn how to create the right systems, not try to do things with no system, that are able to facilitate faster growth.

Focusing merely on effort (of yourself and your team) is almost guaranteed to ensure that your quality problem will persist.

Focus on smarts and systems instead.

You Don’t “Run Out” Of Ideas

Generating ideas is not like emptying a reservoir.

You don’t tap into your idea source and then drain ideas until they’re all gone.

It works more like, well, a generator.

It requires mechanical energy in, but as a result, you get electrical energy out.

You expend energy getting into the right state, meeting up with the right people, organizing the tasks of your day, staring at enough blank screens, cataloguing through the other ideas of the world until—it happens.

Your mechanical energy is converted.

And you are no longer draining a reservoir, but rather are generating a type of electrical output that lights up your mind and charges your whole body.

The reality is, if you feel like you’re “out of ideas,” it isn’t because you’ve emptied what you had—what’s really happened is your generator needs to be looked at and fixed.

This might involve a change in how you optimize your state, changing who you spend your time with, organizing your tasks in more inspiring ways, being more patient with your process, forcing yourself to get more bored, or spending more time cataloguing other idea sources.

And if your generator isn’t broken, then, you simply need to put more mechanical energy in.