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Category: Perception Is Reality

Gratitude Notes

Published on October 6, 2024

Some gratitude notes from the past few days:

  • The temperature has been nearly perfect here in Buffalo, NY, USA. Now that it’s autumn, it drops to a cool 50 degrees (Fahrenheit) at night for sleeping and then warms back up to a beautiful 70 during the day for living. This is my absolute favorite weather of the year.
  • I caught a whiff of fresh firewood being burned on one of the above mentioned cool nights recently. It nearly lifted me off the face of the earth it was so heavenly.
  • One of my students shared with me that he works overnights from 11pm – 7am… and that he hates it and hasn’t been sleeping because of it. I sometimes find myself complaining about my work hours… but, after that spoonful of perspective… I suddenly felt super grateful for them.

It’s good to refresh your gratitude list every now and again—with specific things you’ve noticed in your life as of late. And writing them down makes the practice even better.

…What are some gratitude notes from some of your past few days?

P.s. In case you missed it, you can read the best of what was posted to MoveMe Quotes last week here.

What Are Your Inputs Making You Believe?

Published on October 1, 2024

Seeing the number of subscribers go down on my email lists makes me want to write and publish less. Reading the comments from readers who resonated with what I wrote makes me want to write more.

Training with people who are arrogant and chronic complainers makes me want to train a whole lot less. Training with people who are humble and hard working makes me want to train a whole lot more.

Working with people who are lazy and who have other people do most of their work for them makes me want to help that person a bunch less. Working with people who are focused and who take initiative to get more than their fair share done makes me want to help them a bunch more.

If you’re feeling some kind of way about your work, training, creative processes, etc—check your inputs. When you focus too much on the ones that upset, frustrate, and pain you—it’s no wonder you’re feeling badly about the process as a whole.

P.s. If something I’ve written has resonated with you and you’d like to support this ongoing project, you can hook me up with a coffee here :)

The Frustrated Eye

Published on September 7, 2024

While I was away at Burning Man, my email service provider (who sends out these daily emails) retired their services.

…Of course.

And so when I got back, not only did I have to unpack, reintegrate into daily living, and make sense of the other-worldly experience that was/is Burning Man… but I also had to find a new email service provider, migrate all of my subscribers over to them, redraft all of my email templates and rss feed settings from scratch, rebuild all of my email capture forms and popups, and create new automation flows.

…Not exactly good timing when there’s a million other things to do after coming back from vacation.

But, with that challenge came an opportunity that I had been procrastinating for a long time.

My old email service provider wasn’t really keeping themselves up-to-date with the times. They had a service that worked, kept it minimal, and trucked forward for almost 10 years without changing much along the way.

And while it worked just fine for me, it was definitely time for a refresh.

And that’s what coming home to this challenge gave me the opportunity to do… refresh what I had been stubbornly refusing to do for so long.

Worth thinking about for yourself: what challenge are you facing in your life and where’s the opportunity in that challenge?

In the heat of the moment it can feel like there absolutely isn’t one—and the only presiding thoughts and emotions are all geared towards “the bad” and the inconveniences of the circumstance.

…But with a calm and collected mind, you just might find there’s more to your life’s challenges than what meets the frustrated eye.

Why Do Martial Arts Forms / Patterns?

Published on June 12, 2024

In Tae Kwon-Do, we practice forms—traditionally constructed and precise patterns of moves—for a variety of reasons.

To the untrained eye, one might wonder what their purpose is… here’s a traditional form I performed in 2015 for context.

…They certainly don’t look like moves you might use to defend yourself. Which, as most people might understand it, should be one of the primary goals of training in martial arts.

To which I’d say it is… and that they actually are… moves to help you learn to do exactly that.

…The translation just isn’t literal.

In the same way an allegory is a story, poem, or picture that can be interpreted to reveal a hidden meaning… forms are carefully constructed (artistic) patterns of moves that are densely saturated with hidden meaning.

…Which makes them one of the most important mediums through which our art’s sacred lessons are handed down from one generation of martial artists to the next.

To those who look at and judge it by what they see on the surface… the lessons will forever remain a mystery.

But, to those who humble themselves enough to become a practitioner and try… and learn… and experiment… will slowly… slowly… reveal a world dense with knowledge and lessons that will forever change how they engage with the art and mystery of life.

Today’s inner work prompt is this: what’s something you only understand superficially that you’d like to get to know more deeply? Be it a spiritual text, a culturally rich form of movement, or even yourself… pick something, block out some reoccurring time for it, and begin to explore.

There’s far more than what’s on the surface.

What You See Is What You Look For

Published on February 4, 2024

Walking into Target today, I had a thought that I’d try to commit as many random acts of kindness as I could.

…Boy did that change the shopping experience from what it could’ve been/usually is.

P.s. In case you missed it, you can read the best of what I posted to MoveMe Quotes last week, here.

Happy Birthday, Ma

Published on January 8, 2024

Today is my mom’s birthday.

And one of my favorite lessons I’ve learned from her is that we humans age like fine wine (she loves a regular glass of red wine so as cliché as it is, it felt too appropriate).

We don’t get worse with age… we get better.

We don’t move away from our prime… we continue to grow as our definition of “prime” grows.

We don’t lose parts of ourselves as we age… we gain deeper understanding of ourselves with each reflected upon experience.

We don’t attach to some pinnacle point in our past… we keep our bags packed light and look towards our next mountain as we continue our climb.

A new decade or a new year isn’t something to be feared… it’s something to be celebrated.

There is no number of trips around the sun that’ll suddenly make you “old,” only stories you can tell yourself that’ll either cause atrophy or spark new growth.

…And there’s always a story you can tell yourself that’ll spark new growth.

Especially when today marks the milestone day when you are the wisest and most self-aware you have ever been in your entire life.

…Which, I’d say, is a cause for celebration, indeed.

P.s. We watched Lunana: A Yak in the Classroom (2019) yesterday as part of our celebration and all thought it was really great. Would recommend.

Hair-Pulling Issues

Published on November 29, 2023

I’ve been experiencing some hair-pulling email issues over the past few days.

Things that were supposed to happen when somebody opts in to get my daily or weekly emails, wasn’t. The plugins and forms that were supposed to fix the problems, weren’t. And when I invested $800+ for a Cyber Monday deal to switch to a new email service provider… I quickly realized that they came with their own set of new, hair-pulling issues that I’d have to resolve. And so it has gone so far this week…

But then…

I heard that one of my students’ mom got her finger broken by her autistic daughter…

And that one of my coworker’s sisters was in the hospital…

And that one of my students’ dad passed away…

And that another one of my students’ mom passed away which lead him to drop everything and fly to the other side of the planet to be with his family…

And I remembered…

Email issues are laughable issues in the grand scheme of things.

When you’re feeling like you’re about ready to pull your hair out over the issues you’re facing in your life… try zooming out from your micro perspective and soaking in issues from a wider lens.

…Not because we want to think about bigger, badder, more heart-wrenching issues… but, because we want to gain perspective.

…So that we can ease our way back into our lives with a deeper sense of understanding and so we can revisit our “hair pulling issues” from a new head space.

…One that maybe puts “hair pulling issues” in air quotes and no longer has them bolded and underlined.