Category: Thinking Clearly

Your Holidays Your Way

Published on December 21, 2024

Some counter culture gift ideas for the holiday season.

A friend and his girlfriend decided they were going to skip town during the holidays altogether and have themselves an experiential weekend in a city they’ve never visited before capped off with an NBA game as the cherry on top.

Another friend was telling me about a new tradition he and his wife started with Gold Belly. Apparently, you can live in Alaska and have Chicago style deep dish pizza for dinner—without ever leaving your home. Or Philly Cheesesteaks from Philadelphia or lobster from Maine for that matter… Each year, it’s a new dinner dish from somewhere different across the USA and Canada. And it’s a gift that’s totally unique, authentic, and shared.

And yet another friend was telling me how he and his wife have given up gift giving altogether and decided to write each other a love letter each year instead.

Sometimes we get so caught up in the commercial brainwashing of the holiday season that we forget we have control over how we want our holiday to actually unfold.

Ask yourself what your ideal holiday schedule would look like… what experiences you truly want to put on a pedestal (getting an expensive gift?)… and then start reverse engineering your way towards that vision.

As is the case with most things in life… this holiday season is what you make it.

…Not what it’s been made out to be.

Fight For Alignment

Published on December 18, 2024

It’s one thing to use your willpower to get a task done. It’s another thing to use your willpower to get the same task done at the most aligned time.

It’s one thing to plan a night out with friends. It’s another thing to plan a night out with friends who are completely aligned with your energy going into that night out.

It’s one thing to go to work and do your job. It’s another thing to fight for alignment with the place you work and the job you’re doing and the people you’re with.

Alignment is what allows you to get the same—if not more—done with less effort and/or in less time.

Alignment is what unlocks a feeling of fulfillment, a sense of purpose, and/or a level of vibrancy/joy from something that otherwise might feel like an obligation, task, or chore.

Alignment is the good fight worth fighting because being mis-aligned is the completely counterproductive act of fighting against yourself.

Enough of that, dear reader.

It’s time to point your time, energy, and effort towards bigger and better things… more efficient and productive things… more meaningful and memorable things…

…And a great place to start is with what you’re going to do after you finish reading this short article.

Each Moment Is A Repetition

Published on December 12, 2024

I read a great line by James Clear today that said, “If we consider each moment a ‘repetition,’ what are most people training for all day?”

Some, I’d say, are training to become angry keyboard warriors.

Others, I’d say, are training to become professional self-sabotagers.

And there are plenty who it’d appear are training to become full-time spectators.

…This is an excellent question to integrate into your mindfulness practice.

Maybe add a random alarm on your phone or do a daily check-in at a specific time and ask yourself, “What am I training for—what am I getting repetitions in for—in this moment?”

…Are you reinforcing a message of self-doubt or a message of confidence and courage?

…Are you reinforcing a behavior of knee-jerk anger or calm removal from anger-inducing situations?

Are you casting votes for being a life spectator or a life participant?

…Because one thing is for sure, our life is built on moments. One moment at a time, one building block at a time, we choose how we construct the building that is our life. The question is… what kind of quality are you getting from each of those moments?

Angry Texts

Published on December 10, 2024

I really wanted to send an angry text.

I was angry. But, it was also almost 11pm.

And if there’s anything I’ve learned from sending angry texts, it’s that sending them when you’re at peak anger is rarely a good idea.

Do it at or around 11pm and you might as well set up studio speakers on either side of your pillows and blast screamo music all night because that’s what your mind will be doing all night after you hit “send” anyway.

It’s best to send angry texts when you’re calm.

…When the noise of the loudest emotions have been given time to settle and quiet. When the clarity of your thoughts have been given time to emerge. When the tone of your voice has gone from screamo to “I’m just disappointed because…”

Not to mention the fact that right before bed is the point at which you’re the lowest on energy than at any other point throughout the day and angry conversations likely require more energy than any other conversation you’ve had up until that point.

Better might be to just leave it alone for the night.

…To grab a book and get lost in the life of another.

…To read until your eyes unwillingly shut, to get as good of a sleep as you’re able, and to revisit the situation in the morning when you’re seeing things afresh and have renewed energy to engage in complicated matters like anger.

Heck… what you might even realize is that the text isn’t worth sending at all because your inner peace is better than most of the replies you could ever hope to get from an angry text anyway.

Refreshing Reminders

Published on December 8, 2024

I have four sticky notes posted on the bottom of my computer screen.

One that has my 2024 goals.

Two that each have a question on them.

And one that has a short list of six things I wanted to remind myself to keep doing.

…I put them there to remind me daily of my direction and to help me stay on track.

And while reflecting on them today, I realized I’ve outgrown each of them.

My goals have changed, the reminder list has become irrelevant, and the questions don’t serve me how they used to.

…It’s time to update the sticky notes.

And for everything you have posted as a reminder for you in your life, take some time to reflect on each and ask yourself the same question: is this still serving me?

Because if it isn’t, it’s time to refresh it with something that will.

P.s. I also published 9 Brian Tracy Quotes from No Excuses! and How To Lead A More Self-Disciplined Life today.

Concentration Follows Interest

Published on December 6, 2024

Think about how much time you can spend staring unflinchingly at a screen that’s displaying an algorithmic refined series of “interesting” media.

Contrast this with how hard it is for you to concentrate for even a few minutes on a project you don’t give two cares about and it’d appear as though you were inspecting two completely different concentrations from two completely different people.

…Looking purely at their faces without any knowledge of which task they were engaged in and you’d say one had ADHD and the other was some kind of focus machine.

Which illustrates an important point to understand about us humans.

Concentration isn’t so much a measure of a person’s skill or ability to concentrate… it’s a measure of how aligned they are with something that’s interesting to them.

Because while, yes, algorithms are excellent at endlessly displaying an onslaught of personalized interests designed specifically to maintain our attention… there’s another tool that’s even more powerful.

One that’s backed by the most complex object in the known Universe.

Can you guess what it is?

…The human imagination backed by the human brain.

Within which there are approximately 1 million billion synapses (the links between nerve cells). Hard to grasp, I know. But if you were to count these synapses one per second, it would take about 32 million years to complete.

This is what’s between your ears right now. And all it takes to unleash the unfathomable power of this gift are the correct keys that are the interests of your life. Discover these and the superficial value that most algorithms produce will quickly become obsolete.

…Discover these and you’ll never have a concentration problem again.

This Again

Published on December 4, 2024

I woke up today and saw nothing but white as I looked out my bedroom window—about a foot of snow blanketed my neighborhood overnight for the first time this season—and my first thought was, “Damn. This again.” And I dragged my feet as I thought about unpacking all my snow tools, shoveling, ice scraping, salting, layering, slipping, sliding, shivering, etc.

And not even an hour later I got a text from one of my co-workers saying, “I can’t come into work. It’s snowing and the elves have summoned me. It’s Christmas.” Followed shortly thereafter with another that said, “I brought the kids to school and then came home and laid down in the snow. I’m in heaven.” And another that said, “It was a miracle that we arrived to school on time. I just love this time of year and I love snow so much. It makes me feel like a kid again and reminds me to slow down.”

…Damn.

Same snow. Radically different reality.

And since there’s no changing the snow… maybe it’s a good time to try changing how I (we?) see it.

P.s. The above post has nothing to do with snow.