The Ideas Index
In every edition, I share three ideas from my notebooks. It is the reader’s favourite in the newsletter. So I thought it would be great to round up all the ideas into one page for easy access. Just scroll around and land on something and see how that lands with you.
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These go back from May 2023 but some of them are taken from notebooks that go back many years before then.
The power of words can hurt or bring others up. Choose your words carefully. Claudia reminded me this week that you can write a letter and then destroy it afterwards and you will get the same benefit as if you sent it.
Move your first ideas through. They are the best ones. Learn to not over-censor yourself with those precious first ideas.
Tell people how you can help them. Humble yourself in their presence. Sales is just a vehicle for helping people get what they are looking for. It is not a tool to make you feel lower than other people just because you have something to offer and would like money in exchange for that.
Do your best to “Find Jesus” for the month of April at the very least. Some sort of North Star or strategy that you want to live by for the next few weeks.
Be easy on yourself. You are monkey genetics expected to make money like a Rockefeller in a world that’s operated by machine-learning intelligence feeding you low quality videos that tap into your monkey genetics. Just be easy on yourself, will you?
Prime the pump for the day with quiet and taking time for yourself. The first hour of your day will dictate how you will respond to everything that happens afterwards. This is the set and setting they discovered in the first LSD experiments.
Use the phrase, “So what?” to challenge your resistance. I don’t feel like writing today or practising my instrument: So what? You might notice that your stubbornness and aversion to exercise or cooking whole foods can slowly go away as you start to take action.
Start your day by tapping into the feeling of being connected. This means something different for each person. I sometimes like to imagine that I’m plugging into a massive computer network located above Planet Earth.
Ask yourself who or what you would be without the voice in your head. When you try to stop yourself from doing the things that are important to you, remember this question and the effect of having a voice in your head.
The lower vibration is the voice that says you’re not good enough and you’ve tried everything and you’re going to fail again. You should be hanging around with the higher vibration instead. Be curious about trying the next thing out and seeing what happens. Curiosity is the higher vibration.
Your experience is exactly what you say it is. If you say the past year has been a form of wandering in the desert, then that is exactly what the past year has been. If you say instead that you’re discovering your personal oasis and that you had to hike through some hot, dry sand to get there, then that’s what it will be. Words and language are energy. Use them to your advantage.
I don’t work on Thursdays because I work 7 days a week. I decided that Thursdays has been the best day to do the things that interest me the most and to let my mind rest. Then I come back on Friday and tie up loose ends for the week. At my last position, it was in my contract that I worked four days a week and I suggest you consider something similar for your work arrangement. If at the very least, take an extended morning or lunch break once a week to signal that you need rest in order to be creative. The weekend sucks for taking a break because everyone else is doing it too.
The free version of Grammarly is going to shit. It has tucked basic suggestions away under premium. This isn’t a problem though as you will now have to use your brain a bit more when it highlights a sentence.
You can filter tap water quite well using reverse-osmosis which is what those machines in the grocery store do. The problem is it won’t taste great because they’ve filtered the minerals out. One basic way to re-mineralize water is to add a pinch of pink Himalayan salt to it. Ask a good barista about water and they’ll give you some info.
Push yourself out of your comfort zone with small experiments. If you want to try a cold shower, then start the water at medium and move it to cold once you’re in there. If reaching out to people for networking scares you, then say hello to people that don’t give you anxiety first.
Try setting little goals throughout the day. Goals don’t have to be large, overarching things, but simply an aspiration to get this or that thing done.
Create an environment of focus and doing your Most Creative Work. Think about the mindset and the physical space that you work in (set and setting).
Send yourself an email outlining everything you’re working on and what you’d like to get done this week. This is the simplest way to get re-situated after a weekend of rest and watching Dune movies.
Work like you’re inventing the bomb before the Germans do. Put on the Oppenheimer soundtrack if it helps.
Beyonce becomes “Sasha Fierce” when it’s time to perform. What alter-ego do you need to create for yourself?
Meditation is the act of giving your mind some space to exist. Downtime and rest are also in service of this important act.
Every day ask yourself why today is the most important day of your life. Because today is connected to the now and nothing will ever pale in comparison to the present moment. Not tomorrow, and certainly not yesterday. What you do today will change the course of your life forever. The way you think, the way you act. How you treat others, and most importantly how you treat yourself.
If you want to know what to work on next about yourself, ask yourself where your doubts are. Trace them back to your fears and you will have a map of what to do next with your life.
Understand what tasks and habits actually move the needle for the future that you want to build. Don’t stray too far from these things in your day.
When you don’t feel like doing something important, feel the tensions rise up and let it remind you that you are greater than this fear.
To help declutter items around the home, implement a rule like, “If the item isn’t being used in the next ten minutes, stow it away back to its place”.
Before sitting down to work on a task, spend a few minutes coming up with a plan of attack which will pay off in getting it done faster.
The more you pine or lust after something, the faster you repel its energy.
Never rush things that don’t need to be rushed. I’m amazed at how rushed some drivers are, even at 6 am.
Know what is in your control, and what’s outside of it. This usually means that our effort and intention are in our control, how we show up to do our Most Creative Work, or be a kind of loving person to the people in our orbit. Everything else is left to the cosmos to decide.
With or without you, this world is happening. The faster you can let go of this need to control everything, the sooner you will start to move with the current.
A master procrastinator puts off everything that is not important, right now. Sometimes you can leave dishes in the sink or decline a project if you have to get something of higher value done at this moment.
Your pain is your purpose. The challenges you go through are there for you to learn and one day help other people who struggle with the same issues.
Try the Most Minimal Weekly Review. On Friday, write down what you remember happening this week and what the lessons you learned from those things are.
Be willing to make an ass of yourself every day. Look for opportunities to be exposed as the fraud that you are. They’re all going to laugh at you, and once you get overall yourself you’ll be able to laugh along with them.
Never waste a morning. That doesn’t mean you have to be at your computer hustling after you wake up. It means you give yourself the gift of time by waking up as early as you can before the world starts knocking at your door.
Whatever you put your mind towards, it gets created, subconsciously or not. So be conscious about this and create the things that you need.
If something gives you tension, lean into it and go deeper towards it. Running away from the things that scare you only helps reinforce the person you were yesterday.
Process beats out any form of meditation or thinking on a subject. I can think about practicing my guitar all day and nothing will change, whereas just ten minutes in the chair with the instrument in my lap is enough to release the dopamine drip of accomplishment.
We have a tendency or default mode of being that has us think small and get caught up in the weeds. Take some time to think big about what you want from your remaining years in this incarnation. Dreaming has no limits.
What is your method? How do you approach life and all the challenges that come up alongside it? What is the truth living beneath the surface of all the stuff that is coming and going in your world?
The flow state describes the experience of going to a movie where the image and the sound are perfectly synchronized. In that moment you are lost and immersed in the story. What activities put you into your own personal flow state?
Ignore the opinions of other people that you don’t trust. It’s unrealistic and selfish to ignore the opinions of other people in general, but the best qualifier for considering that opinion is whether or not you trust that person.
The Tuck Your Phone into Bed Habit: I can watch TV before bed and still fall asleep fairly quickly. I realized that it’s the strong blue light from the phone right in front of my face, and the way that I engage with it, asking it questions which is the thing that keeps me up past the time I want to. My phone has a bed in the bathroom where it charges up at night, so find a bed for your phone and put it there at least an hour before bed.
Always work in passes or drafts. If you have an item on your to-do list and it says something like, “Send an email to _____”, it’s better to frame it as “Draft email to _____”. This takes the pressure off of finishing the task and having to send an email out. Everything you work on has a no-pressure, draft version associated with it.
Invest your fears and doubts into the successful outcome you plan to achieve. All great work has an element of fear embedded inside which you will use as fuel to burn as you dive into the work.
A to-do list is only useful is put the items into categories and then set priorities. Otherwise it’s overwhelming to look at 12 things that you have to do in no set order. Try Todoist or Tick Tick to get started with this workflow (Apple Reminders has many of these tools built-in).
To get good at playing music or any new skill, be firm with your commitment to show up to practice, and then be easy on yourself with whatever happens when you play. You can’t be firm in both parts of this process or you’ll never want to play an instrument or take up any new skill.
Success is an agreement with your future self and a settlement with your past self1.
I have centred my life around the idea of projects. But a dream this week helped remind me that alongside projects, we need to take tests. A test is when we find out if your idea will be accepted or if it needs more work.
A chess master has to remember many moves, like a taxi cab driver in New York City who has the map in their head. What role does memory play in your work and life? What do you need to remember every day you wake up? What moves do you have to memorize to become better at your job?
We often settle for sub-par experiences in life because we are afraid of living in agreement with what we deserve. Continually seek to raise your standards. The holidays are a great time for mentally shedding any problematic situations that came up this year.
Try to avoid the habit of perfecting your schedule and making the most of every minute. Just accept that this is how your day is unfolding and enjoy it.
A good job or career path is one that unrolls and unlocks new opportunities as you go along. That means there is synergy between you and the company or clients you serve. In other words, you have found yourself in a situation where you are indispensable.
All we really have here is our method, which is our theory of work and life. Every day is a chance to test out our method.
Underneath every difficult life event is some nugget of a breakthrough. If you are quick to react and feel like you’ve been wronged all the time, you will miss that golden nugget sitting right in front of you.
If you find the city overwhelming, put your mind in the countryside. Pretend you live in a small town with 10 other people. In this small town, there is no need to impress people or be a part of anything greater than just showing up for coffee and a 2-egg breakfast on the weekend.
Pressure moves creative work forward. But be careful that the source of the pressure is positive. Being motivated to make an impact on the world is a better pressure than trying to show off to someone and make them feel low.
Creativity only happens through action and getting your reps in. You have to get ideas out onto the page and keep working them.
The practice means that you return to a calm state when things seem chaotic and unruly. It takes a lot of effort to not freak out when things don’t go the way you expected. That’s why it’s a practice. A calm, consistent state of mind is like operating a business.
Joggers seem to be the people who find all the dead bodies in TV mysteries. The early bird doesn’t just get the worm, it finds the corpse.
You are never in the mood to do the work, so just accept that the mood will take shape after you get started.
When things seem to fall apart or feel chaotic, realize that they were never on solid ground to begin with. And when you realize this you just might become liberated from the unrealistic expectation that the world owes you anything
Every thought counts. Every hour of your life counts. And you will tell me that you can’t be so rigid, but watch what happens when you let your thoughts go astray. They all matter. How you spend your time is how you spend your life, and your life is constructed by your thinking.
The term enlightenment is vague but a simple way of understanding it is having control over the situation. You are able to call the shots in your mind, rather than the other way around. Don’t expect to have this power over everything in your life, but sometimes you get this beam of light on a problem you’re facing, and at this point in time, you’re good.
In the morning after you wake from sleep, your brain is closer to the alpha wave state. This is a great time to get your most dreaded tasks done as you’re calm and have the inner critic lowered down. As the day goes on and your mind is stirred up, try to bring it back down to this level however you can.
The quest to find purpose and meaning can be elusive. A good way to jumpstart this process is by simply embarking on the process of finding interesting projects. Look at the current projects that you’re working on - which could even include something with your family - and ask yourself what are the interesting projects that I want to work on? How about a juicy project? Or a Leonardo DaVinci style project? They come in all shapes and sizes. Some light you up and some do nothing for you.
Weekly Plans used to evade me because I thought that I had to figure out what to do on each day before the week starts. The simplest way to do a weekly plan is by just writing out everything you want to accomplish this week. Then you can decide to slot them into days of the week. On Friday you will review what you wrote out on Sunday or Monday and evaluate if it was realistic.
Instead of asking yourself why the universe likes to shit on you all the time1, ask yourself how you can make use of these challenges that come up every few days, weeks or months. Ask yourself what they are teaching you. Learn to ask questions in a way that brings you to productive outcomes rather than just sitting there and complaining.
The universe doesn’t want you to think and act small.
Our society emphasizes “big leadership” which is code for loud people who don’t get anything done and just like getting attention. What does “quiet leadership” look like? How does that interact with the idea of deep work and focus?
When you find a piece of kleenex in your coat pocket, do a little inspection on it and figure out if it’s been used. If you are 100% sure this has not been tampered with then keep it in your pocket. But if you have any shadow of a doubt that there are some remnants on there, discard at once.
From Teddy I have learned that bribery works better at the beginning. I will give him a cookie up front to get him to surrender himself for a walk, instead of the old way which was letting him run around the house and then I give him the cookie after I had to chase him around a few times. In the first option I feel like the situation is under control even though I had to give up a cookie right away. In the second situation, I will still give up a cookie but my ego is battered. Always find clever ways to protect your ego.
This week think of ways you can set up your workspace and your tools to promote focus. This can be the smaller items like checking if your eReader is the right text size so that you move through the pages easily. Also pay attention to the space around your monitor and screen and if your eyes keep going off of it then make some adjustments to the clutter around you.
Every day, tap into your North Star Energy. That is what is guiding you to your most authentic work, as well as building and maintaining relationships that line up with your values1. Don’t be upset if you have a lot of South Pole Dragging in your life which is expected and part of the process. You need to experience things that you don’t want in order to find the things that you do.
Most people live simply for pleasure. Don’t be like most people and live for meaning instead. I feel like this is a common thread that binds many of my readers together. Pleasure is fleeting - as soon as it has worn off, you’re back to the beginning. Meaning on the other hand is a game that will keep going throughout the remainder of your days here. Beautiful and infinite, we have a collective search for meaning inside of us.
Rather than hang out with the effect, get closer to the cause. The effects are the outcomes of decisions you’ve made up until now, and if you’re unhappy with them then get closer to the cause and change course. Work with a therapist or a life coach if you are having trouble finding any perspective, but also journaling is a free form of therapy (The Artist’s Way is a good starting point on journaling as therapy).
Hustle culture tries to teach us that strength is achieved by attaining our goals, but sometimes it’s nice to realize that strength is achieved in the opposite way: By creating an environment of internal peace.
There is a “hot zone” with all work. That means the oven is on and ready to cook the thing finished. If I don’t finish a piece of music in this zone, it almost never gets done. If you don’t reply to an email within a certain window, it’s going to just sit there and it gets harder and harder to respond to.
Some people go to talk therapy, but learning classical guitar became my best therapy option. Working with my teacher we break down the process of how we learn new skills and then it’s up to me to overcome my challenges and excuses during the week. Let’s be honest, our shortcomings are all just a bunch of excuses wearing different outfits. When I finally get over my bullshit, the world around me evaporates as I do my reps to learn these lines - what they call “getting it in your fingers”.
If you tell yourself you will feel like doing this or that thing tomorrow instead of today, the sad truth is that you won’t. That’s because we are so bad at predicting our emotional states in the future that there is no point in even thinking this way. Just accept that today is the best day to do the thing that’s on your mind.
Your life is lived in accordance to the standards that you set. If you have low standards for work and relationships, that’s what you will get back. The good news is that you get to decide what your standards are and live according to them.
The Resistance is the voice of fear and doubt that whispers crap in your ear throughout the day. Notice it as soon as it shows up and decide if you want to listen to it. Sure it might tell you some interesting information, but don’t accept it as truth.
When you look out out onto a still lake you will see a reflection of the trees around it. But it’s distorted by the water and the ripples in it. Our mind operates like the water, offering only a reflection of reality and the ripples are our past experiences making it even more untrustworthy.
The goal is to see the world less through the reflection which you look down to see, but to look up and see the trees themselves which is the true nature of things.
When you are left watching the sunrise for more than an hour while your friends are asleep with no cell reception, will you think about what you want to look up when you get back to reception or will appreciate that staring into stillness is a gift that the city tries to rob you of?
Most of our days are spent avoiding having to do things - even the things we “love” doing. We avoid them because we fear we won’t be good enough at them. This is the trap of perfectionism which gets amplified when you associate with driven people (driven can be an incredibly negative and destructive trait).
Nature is the opposite of perfection which is what ironically makes it so beautiful. The colours and the smells just come at you all at once. Tap into nature when you work and appreciate the way things are. Pay attention to who you are and what your strengths are. You can’t be everything to everyone. You have a unique role to fill in this world that no one else can do. Go out and find it.
Unexpectation is not a proper word, but I would like to make a case that we should be open to unexpectation when we sit down to work or go to an event that makes us nervous. This really refers to being open to surprises and serendipity. We can get rigid about how we live our lives and plan our days, but being open to unexpectation means we will accept whatever comes our way and work with it.
Stay focused on what lights you up. We have a tendency to spend so much of our days doing things that do the opposite to us because are afraid of doing things that make us happy. Be selfish and know that the world needs us to stay close to what lights us up inside.
To learn a piece of music, we have to put in the work to make it play easier. When we don’t know a piece, it plays really hard and chunky. To make it play easier we pay for the ability up front through hard work. Get disciplined, do things that scare you, and have difficult conversations now in order to make the rest of your life easier.
Taking a break from our work and our routines can be more stressful than just powering through. Be careful to not let the mind layer get a hold of things at this time. It will tell you things that aren’t true.
The fall season is a reminder of how things are constantly changing. Just as you made peace with summer the leaves are going to turn red on you. Notice the constant shifting around of plans in your life and don’t try to hold onto things the way people try to hold on to summer.
The arrival of humans is a small blink in the history of the universe. We think everything’s about us and we take on guilt about things that are beyond our control. Don’t be like Atlas holding the world on his shoulders. Focus on the ball that you can move forward this week and nothing else.
Learn to see the beauty in the messiness of everything. It can be frustrating that things don’t work out the way you want them to, so maybe it would be better to stop asking for them to work out in a certain way and just accept the messiness for what it is? And this pairs well with the idea of not bothering to try to change people to fit your worldview. Work with people for who they are and what they want to become.
If you’re having trouble getting out of bed in the morning, try the app Alarmy which lets you scan a barcode on the other side of your home in order to turn the alarm off. The trick is to find the next action after that or else you can still go back to bed after you do what the app calls a “mission”.
Important work is inconvenient. It can have the same weight as cleaning out a dusty old shed on a nice day. But oftentimes times we’d rather field incoming requests that are really not that important because it’s convenient when people hand tasks over to you that are well defined. So instead, you should hand yourself well defined tasks and start to clean out that shed. Ask how you can make the biggest impact possible on your short visit to this planet.
A friend recently told me that they planned a trip for their family meticulously, and no one seemed to notice how smoothly it went. I told her that they would only notice if something went wrong. This is a good metaphor for our lives, we take for granted how good everything is, and small disruptions can make it feel like nothing’s working out. Try not to live this way.
Instead of seeking status, seek to work on yourself instead. Impress the past versions of yourself. Trying to impress other people will leave you empty. The thrill of attaining objects or awards will be gone quickly. However, the relationship with your inner self is what will persist throughout your lifetime. You impress your past self by finding challenges that make you uncomfortable and going after them rather than staring at your phone on the couch as little as possible.
Spending money is literally the opposite of earning it, not just because money is going out of your account but because of how much time and effort it takes to shop for new things. If you have money to spend, it becomes your job to blow it, so make sure you spend it on things that will keep moving you forward toward your goals, and not in a delusional way.
Take ten minutes and see if you can enjoy your life for those ten minutes. Enjoy the experience of being human and not letting all the nonsense get to you for just those ten minutes. You will see that the only reality is in this breath. Reality is not the crap that happened in the past or the worry about what’s happening next. It’s in this breath that you’re on.
Always work to discard bullshit - bullshit people, bullshit projects, bullshit thinking. What is bullshit? It’s ideas that are generated by a mindset of fear and worry. The habit of thinking small. The meaningless work that we enroll each other in because we’re afraid of doing something that’s important.
What day of the week will your mind shift and be open to what is possible? Is it going to happen on Tuesday, Thursday or today?
The thought of finishing a piece of music can be 100 times heavier than actually sitting down to finish it.
Do your best: Take things to 80% satisfaction and be willing to let it go from there. The listener will either enjoy it or not care for it, but either way the sun will still rise tomorrow and bears will continue to shit in the woods.
Find the intrinsic motivation in everything you do, what I call your Joe vs. The Volcano2 moment in life. While there is no shortage of music out there, and streaming reduces the payout to astronomical lows, we do this work for our own personal growth and if there is an external reward as a result, then great.
Notice when you’re imagining what other people think about you. “Their” commentary. I put their in quotes because you have usually made up what other people are thinking. This is all noise.
Internal motivation means you are doing things because you will learn things along the way. External motivation means you are doing them to seek approval from others. We need a bit of both to push us forward but try to remember the first category when you get a bit wonky with your work.
We look at the world through different windows on a house. Some windows represent the past. When we look through those windows it’s either a sense of regret or longing. I would rather look through other windows that represent the present or the future. What is possible when we choose to let go of storylines?
Be in the business of forgiving personal debts. Holding grudges is like wearing a heavy backpack. You might not be able to take the whole pack off right away but at least get rid of some of the items in it. Every day, work to let go of these items.
Write down the things that scare you and go towards them (aka your blockages). While I love sitting in a warm bath early on in the day, jumping into a cold shower is better for this issue. Cold shower tip: stand under the faucet with no water running and send it through the shower head immediately rather than try to jump into one that’s already running.
Work on loosening your grip on things. I watched a bit of a mini-documentary on Thelonius Monk last night. A master jazz pianist, but he integrated a relaxed sloppiness into his style and owned it. That is what it means to be original. Don’t be afraid to play the piano with your elbows sometimes.
Facing rejections or setbacks in life either business or relationships is not personal. People are moving in hundreds of directions like traffic, don’t bother trying to figure them out. Figure yourself out instead by returning to your centre.
Tomorrow begins today. By the late afternoon my body is shutting down, so in the evening it’s better to start thinking about what you want to get done tomorrow. Last night I squeezed a short guitar practice in at 9pm by using Focusmate, but that’s rare for me.
If you are thinking about starting a business or side-hustle, consider what you’re interested in, mixed with a bit of what others are interested in, packaged in a way that’s convenient for other people to take advantage of it. Convenience doesn’t have to be an app, it can be an experience in real life but it just has to be simple to sign up to attend.
Everyone wakes up at different times, but I always work hard to get out of bed after the alarm goes off. I fall into periods of snoozing but I find ways to get out of it again using habit-tracking apps that give me the reward of a checkmark. The main thing is to just get out of your bedroom. I wouldn’t be able to do this without putting the alarm on the other side of the room though.
While left and right brain theories are being debunked, I think we can all agree that there are creative zones in the brain that speak to openness and possibility, and then there are more analytical and realistic ones that I associate with fear and worry. The goal is to get the two to talk to each other so that you are working with new ideas and seeing them through, but also being a responsible member of society at the same time.
If something is bothering me, I realized that thinking about that thing is really just an exit from doing things that will make me better off. This is gravity in action. It’s much easier to sit around and make yourself useless than it is to do exercise or play an instrument. But the rewards of these more difficult activities will kick in within 5-10 minutes of sitting down to do them. When feeling useless, try to fast forward to that “5 minutes in period”. Taking action on the things that are important to you is a way of paying yourself without having money involved
One afternoon this week I was incredibly bored. I didn’t want to do anything. Then I sat outside and I listened to all the people and traffic going by and I realized that there’s no reason to be bored. The world is constantly evolving and shifting, it can be exciting if you let it be. All I really needed that afternoon was a little bit of a break from some tasks that I wasn’t enjoying.
Try to make things or do activities without an agenda. Writing music can either be seen as the act of sitting down and trying to earn money, or without an agenda it can be seen as just trying to arrange notes and rhythms together and to see what happens. Similarly, exercise when trying to lose weight is very difficult, but getting moving and being curious about what might happen from pushing outside your comfort zone is easier to handle.
What does it mean to have your own back? There are many ways you can slice that one up, but one simple area that people can have their own back with is giving themselves an hour to do things that they enjoy without feeling guilty about it. And that is helped by putting the phone away for that hour, even if it’s spent doing nothing at all.
Doing vs. Being. When we are doing, which is like 98% of our day, we are consumed by the mind. It could be trying to sort out a situation that doesn’t need sorting out, plotting out revenge, or plotting your next purchase. Being on the other hand is best described as those states when you’re plugged into the universe. When you are being, there is a cable that is connecting you to infinite space. Making art without an agenda is one way to get there.
Just as there is an inner critic, there is also an inner writer, inner musician or inner athlete. You need to let these parts of you operate without the running commentary of the inner critic. One idea for making this happen is by getting out of bed in the morning and not checking your phone before one of these parts gets to do their work. I find that even waking up to seeing no messages has its own unique effect on me. It’s really an unnecessary habit like repeated email checking throughout the day (nervous ticks).
Notice the storyline that you are making up. An example would be if a piece of music isn’t working out, I might say that the entire approach is wrong and I need new software. Completely ridiculous stuff comes from storylines. They are far worse when applied to dealing with other people. Work to drop storylines and accept things as they are - the track simply didn’t work out, this person is having a bad day or decade. Not your problem. Nothing is really as personal as the mind would like you to believe.
Don’t be afraid to reinvent yourself. I come up against this all the time when working on music. I can be hesitant to try out different things that didn’t fit with the box that I had built for myself over time. However reinvention is possible when you simply let go of those boxes. Careers, relationships or your living space, anything can be reinvented.
There is a messy middle when working through an idea. You have passed the point of being in love with it yet you have to see it through. We experience messy middles in our lives too: Our ambitions have outgrown our skills and training and we want something new. In these times we have to be patient with ourselves as we either abandon something that’s not working or stick through it (for more on this read The Dip by Seth Godin).
Have a point of view. A way of being. Maybe it’s for your work or your life situation. We hear from people all the time on the news and in social feeds, but how often do we take time to really understand our unique point of view? Spending time in quiet we can either develop that point of view through writing or just simply sitting with the issue.
Everything is happening right on schedule
When the student is ready, the teacher will appear
10-20 minutes of simple exercise every day is a realistic goal. Walking, yoga and/or bodyweight exercises in your living room are all very doable. Walking seems to need about an hour to get the full benefit.
In my dream prior to writing this newsletter, I told a small group of people that they need to be less afraid to tell the truth that is on their mind and speak it out loud. I told them to stop sugarcoating and beating around the bush with everything they are trying to communicate. I then proposed that we go around in a circle and let everyone speak bold statements.
Once in a while we can remind ourselves that perfectionism is a horrible disease or affliction, but it’s easy to forget. Perfectionism is a drain on being able to do basic work, complex work, handling social situations, and the stress that accompanies being a human thrown into a chaotic world every week. The sooner you’re ok with things not being perfect, the better off you will be for that period of time to get through the situation at hand.
Creative work is a mitzvah (good deed). This idea came to me with a bit of shock because rigid, goal-based communities like the one I grew up in treat the arts as a fun hobby which is essentially a form of shaming the practice. So it wouldn’t be far off for people to feel a sense of guilt when they paint or play music as it’s not always earning money for a family. If someone can tell themselves that doing their most creative work is a good thing for the world, that would be a step in the right direction.
Here’s an idea to try on: That’s you’re here to make a positive impact on this world. No matter what your job is, no matter what tasks you’ve assigned to yourself, you are here to make that positive impact. You won’t truly grow up until you accept this mission. I could be way off base on this one though, I admit.
The resistance is the life force that pulls you down. It’s the dark side, it’s darth vader. When you feel its pull, call up the visualization of a tennis court and see a dark character serve you a ball. It’s now your job to volley it back and show it that it’s not going to win the game so easily. The muse plays tennis with the resistance every day.
Sometimes it feels like other people are trying to stand in your way. They will be in your way only if you’re watching channel one on the television set. This is where you see silly cartoons and corny reality tv shows. Flip to a higher channel to realize that no one is intentionally setting out to bother you. They are just doing their thing in a way that they understand the world. We become conscious by watching higher channels on the tv set and removing as many judgements about other people as we can.
At some point it might dawn on you that you are not a good person. But don’t worry it’s temporary. I would imagine that you’re a good person most of the time, but once in a while, we fall into a trap. We do things like want credit for an idea or we are convinced we’re right about something and another person is wrong. I think these moments are very important because when you’re younger, you’re completely unaware of how selfish you can be.
So it might be worth paying attention to it once in a while. Social media would definitely stir up these feelings so if you need to take a break simply by logging out, then that’s a great first step. When you get caught up in “the storm”, ask yourself if you’re being a good person or what a good person would do.
Don’t try to solve all of life’s mysteries. Sometimes we get partial information and we then become a detective to figure it out with our minds. An example would be your boss moved a meeting around unexpectedly. Off to the races your mind goes. This is another trap that’s similar to the one above about always being right. Instead, try to find some joy in not letting the subtle movements of the world bother you. They will definitely bother other people. But you don’t have to be like most other people.
Riding my bike I get in touch with the right pace to do things. Even if I’m running late, going too fast through an intersection would be deadly. It seems like everything points to going slower. Our culture makes us feel shitty when we move through life slowly.