Category: The Power Of Reflection

Today, I published 50 of the Most Impactful Lessons I Learned From 2023. Below are seven of my favorites—my 1-minute version if you will. Enjoy :)

1. Making your future goals actionable today is how you prove to yourself that you’re serious about them. Not doing anything about them in the present means they’re still fantasies.

2. There is no easy-only option… only hard now and compounded hard later. Remember this when you’re on the fence about exercising, meditating, writing, being honest, doing inner work, etc.

3. Thumb taps and mouse clicks drastically change lives. Be ruthless in how you curate the media that you allow to reach your eyes and ears. Do NOT underestimate your role in this.

4. Pay yourself in time/energy/attention FIRST. Then, when full, give extra or what you have left over to others. You will never be able to give others enough of your time/energy/attention — they’ll always gladly demand and accept more.

5. What gets measured, gets managed. And what gets managed gets your time. And what gets your time… gets your life. Measure the moments that make you feel alive; time spent with loved ones; the depth of your self-understanding… Measure what really matters.

6. Solitude is a necessary ingredient for great work. And if you’re serious about wanting to produce great work, then get serious about prioritizing solitude into your days.

7. The inner work we choose to avoid becomes the outer suffering we can’t seem to escape. As hard as it might seem upfront, it’s the easiest it’ll ever be to confront right then and there. The things we carry with us only get heavier the longer we carry them.

…Read the rest here.

Create space in your life for careful reflection.

Without it, you’re choosing ignorance to some of your life’s wisest council.

Which, doesn’t come from more YouTube videos, self-help books, deep dive podcasts, informational websites, or conversations with experts—per se.

It comes from your innermost wisdom that whispers advice pulled from EVERYTHING you’ve experienced/ learned/ consumed (informationally) throughout the course of your entire life.

Your innermost wisdom taps into the ocean of information that’s stored in your unconscious that’s just waiting to be explored and utilized. Another video, book, podcast, website, conversation is merely another drop or two into that ocean.

…Which isn’t to downplay the importance of consuming high-quality content.

It’s merely to emphasize the importance of turning off all of the inputs that are constantly pouring more content in, digesting the content you’ve already consumed, and giving your innermost wisdom a platform to finally communicate (which, worth mentioning, doesn’t always come in words… some of it comes in the form of symbols, metaphors, and stories that need interpreting… more on that here).

What does space for careful reflection look like?

• Journaling
• Walking
• Hiking
• Showering
• Driving
• Meditating
• Sitting and thinking

…Whatever you want it to look like, honestly. So long as it’s (1) undisrupted by any additional incoming information and (2) deliberately focused on reflection.

With those two elements in tact—consider yourself back in contact with your life’s wisest council.

All you need to consider now is how much time can you devote to its insight?

Because zero time daily is you choosing to be ignorant.

…And nobody is so busy that ignorance is their only choice.

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P.s. Related: Everyone Who Says You Should Never Look Back Is Wrong.

I find myself writing about similar topics often.

That’s because there are certain topics I think about often.

And for those who are trying to do more writing and get turned off by the idea of writing similar things on similar topics time and again… think about it like this:

Writing isn’t just about the end product—the piece you ship, share, or hide. Writing is about the reflecting, the searching for the words, the act of trying to understand what it is you think about a thing—whatever it is you care enough to think and write about.

And to spend time bringing clarity to topics you tend to think most often about? The ones you can’t help but return to time and again? The ones you wrote about years ago and find yourself circling back to all this time later? …Is no waste of effort.

In fact, it’s a sign of a greater investment being made.

Because thoughts shape actions and actions shape lives… and writing clarifies thoughts which clarifies actions for a more deliberate life. And bringing (increasing) clarity to topics you tend to think most often about will likely have the greatest impact on your future actions and life path—wouldn’t you say?

Now quit using redundancy as an excuse and get back to it.

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P.s. Yesterday, MoveMe Quotes was down for most of the day. It’s back up and running. Thank you to those who reached out to let me know.

There have been several instances lately where I’ve wanted to say something, taken a deliberate pause instead, ended up not saying or changing what I was going to say, and have felt curiously grateful as a result.

If there’s anything I’ve learned from writing as much as I have, it’s that the thought almost always improves with some space and additional thought. And now I’m learning how real that is for speaking, too.

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

Before you start mega-phoning your New Year’s resolutions and lining up at your January 1st start line to sprint towards a new reality… it’s imperative you take a look back.

How did things play out for you from 2022? 2021? 2020? Etc. Can you dig up a record (or three) of what your goals and action strategies were from then? How they played out? What you were experiencing as you went?

This exploration will give you trends and insight that could be essential to playing out 2023 differently… more strategically… better.

Side note: if you don’t have a record like this, and you think having a record like this now would be valuable, maybe it’s something you could start this year?

Main train: One of the first quotes that I remember feeling deeply impacted by, as cliché as it sounds to me now, was: “If you keep on doing what you’ve been doing, you’ll keep on getting what you’ve been getting.”

History may not repeat itself exactly—but, have no doubt: history rhymes.

And 2023 will rhyme with all of your other years and resolution attempts.

So, don’t forget to look back before you floor it forward. You might learn something about yourself that’ll impact your pace, direction, ambition, accountability, strategy, etc. that you hadn’t quite internalized before.

And maybe it’s that one realization that’ll actually make 2023 your best year ever.

Remember this: the only time you DON’T grow from what happens in life is when you DON’T reflect.

Mindlessly moving from one experience to the next is what leads to repeated mistakes, cyclical thinking, and stagnation.

Which means, if reflection is in your life… regardless of the hardships, trials, and challenges… you can, at minimum, count on the fact that you’re steady growing with every happening as a result.

And if you can put trust in your growth (which you should), you can also count on the fact that you’ll eventually outgrow your current hardships, trials, and challenges (which is how it works).

…And they won’t, in fact, be an unending source of pain and suffering in your life.

Each of these situations, too, shall pass (in proportion to the quality of your reflections)—believe it.

Remember this, when you say you don’t have time for reflection in your “busy” life.

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P.s. Everyone who says you should never look back is wrong.