Category: Thinking Clearly

Rolling Creative Energy Into Other Tasks

Published on March 25, 2024

When I get excited about something, like a creative project, I tend to obsess.

I’ll work on it early, I’ll work on it late, and I’ll cut from my day as many of my other tasks/priorities as I can to maximize my ability to keep working on it.

This happens when I’m redesigning websites, choreographing new martial arts material, authoring new digital products, reorganizing spaces, learning new skills, and so on.

Most recently, I’ve been rebuilding my martial arts school’s pro-shop.

It was in desperate need of an update after having been essentially ignored for years.

What I’ve been trying to manage more mindfully this time around, however, as I undertake this creative project, is how I balance my time and to resist devoting too much at once to its completion.

I wanted to stay late to finish the whole project last week… but, I kept it to only one extra hour and allowed myself to leave before its completion.

I wanted to go in early to get a head start… but, I resisted.

I even wanted to go in on Sunday to finish… but, didn’t

What I’m trying to teach myself is to take that gifted creative energy and roll it into my other tasks. How can I use this energy to get my other priority tasks done? How can I take this excitement and use it to boost my mood? How can I take this burst of inspiration and roll it into my writing?

While there’s nothing wrong with going all-in and riding that creative wave with everything you’ve got… learning to stretch that wave and balance yourself in the process might lead to a far greater return.

Aligned Success Is The REAL Success

Published on March 22, 2024

There’s no success without alignment.

$1,000,000+ doing work you hate isn’t success.
30 pounds lost following a diet and exercise regimen that makes you miserable isn’t a success.
Reading 100 books in a year that were all irrelevant to your life/interests/goals isn’t a success.
Getting first place in a competition that doesn’t challenge or excite you in any way isn’t a success.
Going viral by intentionally spreading misinformation or hate or content that you would despise consuming yourself isn’t a success.

…Which is why it’s crucially important to find alignment before you ever chase any kind of success.

Inner Work Prompt: What does “success” look like to you? Are your means in alignment with that end?

P.s. Need help finding alignment? My guide, The Art of Forward: Direction > Speed can help. Now 30% off for a limited time.

Picking A “Third Space”

Published on March 13, 2024

Most of us have two consistent spaces in our lives where we get to socialize, experiment, and express ourselves: home and either work or school.

At various times in our lives, there’s a third or fourth space that gives us a chance to further express different sides of our identity. The one that isn’t taking on the role of mother/father/brother/sister/etc or that gets to break free from the role of grade A student or model employee or strict boss. This might have been a local community center, church group, sports team, restaurant/café, shopping center, volunteer organization, etc.

And then at other times in our lives, we lose those third and fourth spaces and slowly allow ourselves to get pigeonholed back into just having two spaces. Or—especially after the pandemic and the rise of remote work—one space only.

The challenge with having only one or two spaces to express yourself and live is that it limits the range of expression of your identity.

I can tell you this first hand. When I’m at home or with my family, I take on my introvert or son/brother identity. When I’m at work, I take on my Martial Arts Instructor/Manager identity.

…But where’s the space for my shooting the crap with friends side of my identity? Or my carefree, speak my mind, unfiltered side? Or my adventurous, exploratory, instigative side?

…I need to actively seek out or create a third or fourth space to honor those sides.

Ask yourself what sides of your identity you’re not giving space to and then reverse engineer your way to a space that honors that type of expression.

…Let your identity stretch its limbs once again.

Two Mindsets That’ll Make You Unstoppable:

Published on March 8, 2024

1) There’s no winning or losing—only learning. The person who wins, but doesn’t learn anything—loses; the person who loses and doesn’t learn anything—loses; and the person who has a plethora of experiences, but never learns anything from them—loses. Learning is what it’s all about. Extracting information from raw experiences that you can then use to guide you forward, upgrade your thinking, improve your processes, make better choices, and challenge yourself more appropriately in the future—whether you win, lose, or just participate makes every experience a win for living.

2) This is just the beginning. The fixed mindset says, “What I have is what I’ve got.” And when we say things like, “I can’t do that” or “That’s just the way I am” or “I’m hopeless”—what we’re really confirming is a fixed mindset way of living. We’re saying our brains and bodies won’t improve or adapt with appropriate challenge, deliberate practice, and communal support. Which, of course, just isn’t true. Our brains and bodies are brilliantly designed from millions of years of evolution to adapt to the challenges they’re exposed to. Which means it isn’t that you “can’t do it” …it’s that you can’t do it yet. It isn’t “just the way you are…” it’s the way you are for now. And you’re definitely not hopeless… you’re actually just at the cusp of a new, humble beginning.

When you know you can learn something from every experience and that you have the ability to grow, adapt, and improve both your body and mind… what could possibly stop you from moving forward in life?

How To Clear A Chaotic Mind

Published on March 7, 2024

1) Brain dump. It’s quite hard to sort through a swirling, ever building chaotic mental mess that filled with half-baked ideas, unrelenting distractionary thoughts, and painful emotions that want to be simultaneously felt as they do suppressed. Writing everything down that’s swirling through your mind allows you to: 1) take it out of your mind (which leaves less there to swirl) and 2) see it all plainly written out so you can make sense of it all. Which leads to:

2) Draw connections. Once it’s all plainly written out in front of you, organize it. Connect thoughts that are related. Simplify thoughts that are unnecessarily complex. Question each thought’s validity and eliminate those that are baseless or fantasy. By reorganizing your brain dump into a sorted list, so too will you be reorganizing your brain space from a dump to a sorted space. And finally:

3) Prioritize and act. Once everything is organized and cleaned up, the final step is to problem solve and act in accordance to what you’ve deemed as a priority. If there’s an easy solution to a problem, take it. If there’s a hard solution that you want to avoid, break it down into the smallest steps possible and take the first one. Or get the necessary (professional) help. If there’s no solution, drop it. The goal here is to close open-ended processes until that thick tornado that was rampaging through your head is thinned to just a few gusts of wind. Heck, maybe you can even get to a point of mental stillness and calm…?

…This is the way.

Got Fruit?

Published on March 6, 2024

Plant seeds early and often.

Needing fruit today and not having planted any seeds for that fruit will bear you zero fruit.

And while today is the worst time to plant a seed for a fruit today, it’s simultaneously the best possible time to plant a seed for fruit in the future. In fact, there could be no better time than today to plant your seeds since, you know, there’s no planting seeds yesterday.

The life reality is: you get the fruit only after the seed has been planted, cared for, and nurtured to the point of being ripe—on its own timeline, not yours. And not every seed will take. And not every seed will bear perfectly ripe fruit. And not every seed will survive to adulthood/fruition.

But, if you plant seeds early and often… and you do so abundantly and carefully… and you keep investing time and energy into those seeds’ future… fruition will soon come. And you’ll get to enjoy your season of harvest after having endured many seasons of patience and hard work. This is true for relationships, career, finance, health, education, and so on.

Don’t wait until you need the fruit to start planting the seeds.

Seed planting and care should happen early and often, at each available moment, today and every day.

P.s. What I Learned From Losing In A Seed Growing Contest… And I tried really hard to win, too.

Teaching Humility

Published on February 28, 2024

A parent asked me the other day how he can make his child more humble.

His child was starting to do things like say how much better he was than his dad and ignore his dad’s advice because he thought he knew better—and it was starting to cross the line from confident to cocky.

Telling him to just “be humble,” in my experience, wouldn’t do much good.

The way I look at it is like this: if confidence is success remembered… then cockiness is a disproportionate amount of success remembered compared to failures.

What I told him to try… is exposing him to more failures. Which might not sound like something a father would ever want to do to their son… but it’s exactly what builds humility—particularly in cocky individuals.

I told him to try having him learn a brand new skill… or a complicated sports move… or an advanced martial arts kick. And to have him do it while he’s surrounded by a group of kids who are better than him.

…Let him not be the best one in the room for a while. Let him struggle in front of his peers. Let him learn how to ask the other kids for help. Let him remember what it’s like to be on the other side of the learning curve again. Let him do the things he had to do as a beginner again—the things that got him as good as he got in the first place that he was forgetting about and taking for granted.

Let him learn… how to learn again.