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Category: Thinking Clearly

Forced Clarity

Published on March 24, 2022

You can’t force clarity.

Clarity is something that needs to be surrendered to.

Like when you’re in the middle of a big life decision—stuffing more “solutions” into your mind will probably only further confuse the matter. When what’s really needed, in most cases, is less stuff altogether so that the quiet, unmistakable voice that speaks from deep within can offer its solution based on the depth of knowledge that’s already there.

Try to force the mudded pond to settle and you’ll mud it more.

Surrender to the settling process and the pond floor suddenly starts to come into view.

Creation Renewed

Published on March 23, 2022

Creating is self-expression in its rawest form.

We take already expressed things from the world, mix and mash them up with our ideas, and end up with a never before expressed thing that we get to share.

Which is why, the ultimate win from a creation is a renewed desire to create.

Because self-expression isn’t something that’s ever done—it’s as living and as breathing as we are. And the more we create—the more we express ourselves—the better we get to know ourselves.

It’s also our creations that act as the very foundation of our legacies—what better way to be remembered than by referencing what we uniquely expressed?

With that in mind, here are some gentle reminders for you to keep in your back pocket as you continue to create:

  • Treat “success” cautiously—it leads to contentment and distractions.
  • Treat “failure” cautiously—it leads to frustration and disappointment.
  • Both success and failure can improve the creating process, but they often lead us astray.
  • With each experience, the ultimate goal should be to quickly discard what isn’t useful, carefully apply what is, and return to the work humbly and with a deeper understanding (of ourselves and our work) than before.
  • If the byproduct of what you’re creating is leading you further and further from creating—something is probably wrong.

Remember, the ultimate loss from a creation is an extinguished desire to create.

Social Media Mindfulness

Published on March 22, 2022

To be mindful is to observe and label thoughts, feelings, and sensations in the body in an objective manner.

When we subject ourselves to the firehose of information that is social media, we lose touch with our objective understandings and become distracted and manipulated.

…We’d be naive to think our current state(s) isn’t being affected by our digital environments.

And regardless of the type of information (not all media is created equal), the real problem is in the wildly disproportionate amount of time people spend consuming vs digesting.

The reality in today’s world is that people’s appetites to consume is ever growing and the time they’re allotting for digestion (of said information) is ever shrinking.

And without digestion, consumption can have harmful, toxic, dire effects—which is precisely what many of us are experiencing.

If we’re going to use social media mindfully, we need to establish boundaries from the consumption and make more space for digestion.

This means space minus the phones. Conversation minus the screen(s). Walks minus the ear buds. Showers minus the Siri and Alexas. Waiting minus the feed-refreshing. Driving minus the podcasts. Experiences minus the highlight reeling…

…Life without the penetrating influences of everybody else’s life experiences.

Time to just settle and be.

Little Wins

Published on March 20, 2022

Little wins I’m proud of today:

  • When in a hurry, I stopped and hugged a dear friend (vs waving while rushing).
  • I practiced 3 minutes of stillness while microwaving (vs practicing 3 minutes of media consuming).
  • I said “no” to the cake.

Little wins matter, too.

Why So Serious?

Published on March 18, 2022

I like nonfiction.

I like self-improvement podcasts.

Heck, I like all things personal growth related.

But, sometimes…

I like blasting good music, thumb drumming, air guitaring, and forgetting about all of that.

It’s called balance.

When Authenticity Is Hard And When It’s Easy

Published on March 17, 2022

Authenticity is about congruence between our deeper values and beliefs (i.e., a “true self”) and our actions.

via Chris Do, Twitter

Being authentic is hard when:

  • We let other people dictate our actions.
  • We let media consume all of our downtime.
  • We let our ego control the thought processes of our minds.

Because we live in a world that is constantly pushing its influence on us from every angle, it can be hard to figure out what it is that we actually think.

And without that clarity of thought, of course our actions are going to be misaligned.

Being authentic is easier when:

  • We reflect deeply on and identify our values and beliefs.
  • We make space to process, organize, and remix the information we consume.
  • We control our ego and use it mindfully to serve us (rather than the other way around).

Until we choose to put up boundaries to block outside influences, we will continue to get pushed around and act in ways that are misaligned, unnatural, and confusing even to ourselves.

Boundaries to the outside world are precisely what’s needed to process, organize, and remix. It’s precisely how we settle our mudded minds. It’s precisely how we quiet the ego so we can hear the whisper of our Self.

In short: being authentic is hard when you let the world tell you who you are. Being authentic is easier when you listen to your Self, decide who you want to be, and tell the world who you are.

And while the latter can challenging in its own respect, it will always be exponentially easier than living an inauthentic life.

Sculpting Legacies

Published on March 13, 2022

The problems of our lives are the very material with which we get to sculpt our legacies.

The harder the problems, the harder the material.

And the harder the material, the longer our legacies have the potential to last.

When you only have to face “soft” problems and you don’t put much effort into shaping them—your life legacy is a wad of Play-Doh.

At the other end of the spectrum, if you opt to face “harder” problems and you work hard to shape them into something remarkable—your life legacy results in something more along the lines of a chiseled statue from marble.

Worth noting: this is not a call to make life as “hard” as possible.

Because without the proper tools, a huge block of marble is unsculptable—and that’s not a legacy worth aiming for either.

The goal is to stop complaining about the material we’ve been given and to start finding ways we can sculpt what we have into something we’re proud of.

Unfortunately, we can’t always change the material we’ve been given: life is wildly unfair in that sense.

Fortunately (especially if you’re reading this), we do have the ability to upgrade our tools and materials to make even harder, more exquisitely detailed sculptures.

Wisdom is the ultimate means for upgrading those tools and materials.

And your life’s legacy is worth an investment into the finest.