Category: Defining Success

Imagine this: you’re in the sunset stage of life… sitting in your rocking chair on your cozy porch with the light shining down warming your skin… and you reflect on your life:

• Reflection A: You never created what was always stirring inside because of fear, imposter syndrome, distraction, procrastination, and/or doubt.

• Reflection B: You never went viral, you never became a star, and you never connected with more than a handful of people… but, boy did you create. You have galleries worth of art, books worth of writing, and/or albums worth of music… and it’s all there surrounding you, like old friends, for you to revisit, re-explore, and maybe re-invent into more gifts for that handful of people.

It’s possible, too, that you have a Reflection C: you went viral, became a star, and everybody loved you and still can’t get enough of you. But, the point for me is simple… Reflection B isn’t as bad as so many make it out to be.

In other words, people weight how their creations are liked, commented on, and shared too heavily and quit too easily when the numbers don’t match their expectations. When really… it’s the creating in general that builds the true value, meaning, and fulfillment in the rocking chair at the end of life…

Forget about the day after stats. Stop obsessing over the pluses and minuses. Comparing yourself to lottery winners—in every sense of the phrase—isn’t going to help.

Focus on the quiet whispers of your soul. Lean into the pulls of your curiosity. Block out distractions, expectations, and that which fancies the ego.

Simply surrender to the ebbs and flows… and create.

Reads books.

Does inner work.

Exercises regularly.

Walks and sits with excellent posture.

Rarely eats fast food or uses the microwave.

Eats entire meals without checking phone.

Waits patiently, in line or traffic or elsewhere, without checking phone.

Can facilitate and navigate great conversations without checking phone.

Can disagree and hold a dialog with a person without attacking the person.

Speaks to others with steady eye contact.

Can dance wholeheartedly without any care of judgments.

Compliments more than complains; offers optimism more than pessimism; leads with love more than hate—both in-person and online.

Lives below their means—happily. Regardless of salary size.

Falls asleep quickly. Even after stressful and emotional days.

When discussing New Year Resolutions, an associate mentioned he wanted to read a-chapter-a-day.

His strategy, he explained, was that he had both a “serious book” and a child’s book ready so that on the nights he couldn’t complete a “serious” chapter… he could read from the child’s book instead.

Having attempted and failed this resolution in the past myself (minus the child’s book part), I offered him an alternative strategy.

Rather than making a-chapter-a-day the goal… I suggested he make reading a-page-a-day the goal. This way he could eliminate the children’s book altogether (unless he really wanted to make that his focus read) and read exclusively from the book(s) he most wanted to read from.

The thing about a-chapter-a-day is that chapters are definitely not created equal. And there will be days (most days, in fact) when your appetite for reading and the length of the chapter will be completely mismatched. You’ll find yourself reading short chapters on days when you’re feeling most motivated and staring gravely at the number of pages you still have to go on the days when you’re feeling the least.

The thing about a-page-a-day is that it fixes that. The challenge is equal each day and the strategy is optimized for the days when you’re feeling least motivated—precisely when you’re most likely to fall off the wagon. And if it’s true that we can read even one page on our worst days… then nothing is stopping us from reading every day.

…And what’ll probably end up happening is you’ll read the amount equal to your appetite each day anyway.

Exactly how it should be.

Today I watched a Hot Ones interview of Luka Dončić.

If you don’t know, he’s an incredible NBA basketball player.

In addition to that, he’s building an incredible foundation, The Luca Dončić Foundation—which focuses on creating a more positive and joyful environment for youth sports, particularly basketball, by addressing issues like excessive pressure and providing better support systems for young athletes.

And just tonight, as I was leading my martial arts demo team through our choreographed performance (that we have to show in two weeks), I felt myself walking this line between excessive pressure and maintaining a positive and joyful environment.

Because while, yes, being competitive and adding pressure to training pushes us to realize our full potential…

…That holds true only if we don’t quit because we aren’t having fun anymore.

Don’t miss the forest for the trees… don’t let the trophies supersede original joy and just plain having fun.

A very talented young teenager spoke to me about her struggles with continued martial arts training last night.

She felt like she wasn’t seeing tangible results from taking classes and didn’t feel very motivated to continue because of it.

She’s fit. She’s very flexible. And she’s well coordinated.

…Class-to-class, she wasn’t seeing any noticeable differences in these area—and with no tangible changes, why work so damn hard?

What I spent a solid 20 minutes talking to her about were intangible changes that come with work ethic and dedicated commitment. The obscure—only noticeable to the trained inner eye—changes that happen within.

We talked about further developing the ability to perform under pressure (and how that relates to the high pressure careers she’s aiming for)… her confidence in being able to defend against bigger, stronger, faster assailants… about having a creative outlet for self-expression (something she admitted she didn’t have outside of martial arts)… about having a safe space for mental health breaks/resets… And finally, we talked about legacy and if she was 70 years old looking back on this stage of her life, if she would regret not pushing herself further to see what she was truly capable of… she said she would.

When we don’t try very hard it’s easy to get lost in appearances.

…To judge progress solely on tangibles. To judge a book by its cover. To determine worth based on social media metrics.

But, if we try a little harder… if we look a little closer… we’ll see there’s a whole (inner) world of data to be processed and developed.

…Which might turn out to be the most tangible indicators of progress of all.

Many people like to express their wealth in space—by buying large houses with gigantic rooms on huge plots of land.

But space without time is wasteful.

Real wealth is expressed in time—by having freedom over your calendar to spend large chunks of time doing as you please (in the space you’ve afforded).

Before you buy space… and negatively effect your available time (larger overhead, more maintenance, excessive fees, etc)… maybe you should find ways to buy for time instead.