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Tag: Analogies

Living Your Dream Life

Published on December 21, 2021

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.

Published on December 17, 2021

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

Published on November 19, 2021

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

Published on November 16, 2021

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

Published on November 9, 2021

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.

Before It’s Taken

Published on November 7, 2021

My dog plays with her toys until she gets bored.

And then she could care less about them.

It’s only when I take one of them away that she suddenly cares again.

And cares a whole lot.

We are so much the same.

We don’t really care about what we have until it’s gone.

If only we could enjoy what we have like it was already taken, maybe we wouldn’t have to get things taken before we could truly enjoy.

Go Already.

Published on November 4, 2021

Starting a stopped body is hard.

Keeping a body in motion is easier.

Even if that motion is heading in the wrong direction.

Redirecting is easier than starting.

Which is why you should start even without knowing which direction is the perfect direction to head. You can always turn the steering wheel as you go. It’s really no big deal.

Just do what’s hard, start your damn engine, and get going already.