The heart speaks in whispers.
The world YELLS IN ALL CAPS!!
If we don’t find ways to separate ourselves from the YELLS—we’ll never hear the whispers.
I help busy people do inner work.
The heart speaks in whispers.
The world YELLS IN ALL CAPS!!
If we don’t find ways to separate ourselves from the YELLS—we’ll never hear the whispers.
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.
Here’s my biggest lesson from 2021.
#1: Shorter doesn’t mean less than
In 2020, I started writing daily.
Being the first time I was experimenting with the identity of “writer,” I felt an overbearing need to prove myself.
So, I tried to make up for a lack of experience with a length in writing—and my pieces were loooooong. Much longer than they needed to be and much longer than any audience would want to read daily.
In 2021, with my transition to Twitter, I learned how to be concise.
I learned how to take out fluff, be more direct, be more authentic, be more confident, and how to pack a punch with words.
I learned how shorter reduced the barriers for readers and actually opened more doors rather than closed them.
And it’s through this lesson that this very blog was birthed. With a cap of 280 words, punchy has become my focus.
#2: Inner Travel > Outer Travel
Without even realizing it, most people use outer travel as a means to force inner travel.
But, when you learn how to conduct inner travel on a regular basis, you are no longer limited to expensive flights, convenient timing, and dog-sitter availability.
Traveling, suddenly, becomes free, accessible, and easily timed.
Because ultimately, what we’re after isn’t big mountains, but an experience of awe; not deep oceans, but an experience of vastness; not sunny and seventy beaches, but relaxation; not exotic destinations, but rich experiences.
It’s feelings that we’re after—not places.
And with access to the internet, books, communities, and distraction-free spaces—we can learn how to bring forth those feelings on our own—no forcing required.
Control your information feeds to control your future.
What goes in is what will, eventually, come back out. And what comes out is what will determine how your future plays out.
Because we can’t control what happens to us, but we can absolutely control what comes out of us when things do happen. And if we want things to come out that are going to keep us moving forward, then we need to take the time required now to fill our minds with the best forward-moving information we can collect.
Not only does this mean less passive entertainment, news, and mind-numbing tasks (and more books, podcasts, and art)—it means curating your media feeds and training social media sites to only show you high-quality information.
One of the most important actions I took in 2021 that helped me significantly improve my future (my today) was shifting focus from Instagram to Twitter.
Instagram became a toxic place for me that was filled with images and videos of people in picture-perfect shape, living unbelievable lifestyles, and flaunting things that my ego craved.
It became a platform on which I would compare myself to everybody else—which is the root of all unhappiness. Twitter was like a breath of fresh air.
With its mind-first focus, it was like I was able to connect directly with people’s thoughts and our brains were able to vibe before we ever caught a glimpse of each other’s highlight reels.
My bottom line biggest takeaway is this: remove any and all comparison triggers; control your information feeds; immerse your mind in an ocean of insight—and watch as your future becomes yours.
Question #1: Who brings out the best in you?
Question #2: Who brings out the worst in you?
And now for my real question: Is it really ever anyone but you?
In other words, sure, it’s easy to think that the best people will bring out the best in you and the worst people will bring out the worst in you. But, what comes out from you shouldn’t ever be dependent on them.
What comes out from you should solely be dependent on you.
Everybody should get your best. Not because they deserve it or have earned it—maybe they haven’t. But, because regardless of who you’re surrounded with, even the worst, nobody has the right to control your state of mind.
Life is too short to spend even one minute (that’s sixty seconds we’ll never get back) in your worst state.
And that’s not all—it perpetuates. Their worst state becomes your worst state which likely will become someone else’s worst state. We have to become the alchemists of our minds. We must learn to convert anger to patience; frustration to perseverance; pain to creativity. We must choose to break the cycle.
Otherwise, we might as well pass over the quality of our life to the people nearest to us throughout our days. And hope for the best.