Things that you, as a human being, may find interesting (psychology, productivity, health, career, relationships, parenting, …)
I like this idea…
If you work on something a little bit every day, you end up with something that is massive.
Kenneth Goldsmith
The book Show Your Work references this quote and really brings it home with an image that illustrates how a good picture can outshine even the best words.
👉 By the way, Show Your Work inspires this blog and will most definitely be getting its own super summary (or series) here (eventually).
Something to remember as you reach each new stage in your life.
At 15 I set my heart on learning, at 30 I knew where I stood, at 40 I had no more doubts, at 50 I knew the will of Heaven, at 60 my ears were attuned, and at 70 I followed my heart’s desire without crossing the line.
Confucius
Here are a few tips that helped me get through times when I felt lost or hopeless. This is my practical, step-by-step guide, hard-earned and tested in real life.
Decide what you want. Pick a small goal for now — anything useful. Take the pressure off. Just pick something to work on that you can do.
Think short-term and what’s in your control. What can do you today, tomorrow, this week, this month? You can act most effectively in this timeframe.
Narrow your focus: Do one (main) thing at a time. You can’t do everything all at once. Once you finish a major goal, you can move on to the next with even more focus, having the first thing done.
👉 It takes practice.
Visualize the outcome you want. Close your eyes, breath, and picture in vivid detail what you want to happen. This may sound silly, but it can help motivate you and sharpen your focus.
Work towards the outcome you want in small steps every day. Keep your current daily goals modest; keeping a backlog of stuff to do later is helpful.
👉 Doing Great Things is Boring 🤷🏻♂️.
Place your happiness in the progress towards the results, not in the result itself. Steady work in itself will make you feel better.
👉 “The foolish man seeks happiness in the distance; the wise grows it under his feet.”
Yes, work towards an outcome, but don’t get attached to it; you can’t control everything. Focus on what you can do right now and take pride in your effort, however it may turn out.
Keep your ego in check. Do things because they go with your values and goals and not to look good or to avoid judgement.
Your happiness depends only on you, not on external people, places, or things.
👉 The Secrets to Happiness (Distilled)
Enjoy nourishing foods any time you want: water, tea, bone broth, fruit, avocado, nuts, yogurt…
Try some calming sounds. Listen to some ambient music, nature sounds, movie soundtracks, whatever works. You can find these in your music app or even YouTube.
Freshen up your environment. Get outside for some sunlight and fresh air. Open a window. Light a scented candle or incense. Clean and tidy your home.
Move. Walk, stretch, exercise every day. Find an exercise (or two) that works for you. 🧘🏻
It takes practice.☝️
👉 Super Summary: Think Like a Monk
Ask yourself – is this useful? If you find yourself having unhelpful, repetitive thoughts, then nip them in the bud. These are usually about a past or future that you can’t control and can’t solve by thinking.
Take a few deep breaths, then work on calming yourself.
Focus your mind on a game – Wordle, a crossword puzzle, or a chill app like isowords, Townscaper, paper.io, or MiniMetro.
Work through your thoughts and feelings with journaling. Don’t hold back. Get it all out – the good, the bad, and the ugly. Or just write a haiku about your day to make it more fun. 🤷🏻♂️
Meditate: Clear and observe your mind non-judgmentally. Scan your body, focus on breathing, visualize success, give gratitude, find empathy for others.
Fear makes you do stupid things and must be conquered.
👉 “Fear is the mind-killer.”… “Move, but don’t move the way fear makes you move.”.
Above all, keep faith in yourself. ✌️
I’m going to wrap up my recent Maslow kick with one last little kick in the butt.
You will either step forward into growth or you will step back into safety.
Abraham Maslow
You see people play it safe all the time and end up in the doldrums of easy choices, eventually stagnating and even sinking right where they are.
It’s like when your favorite band tries out a new sound. Sometimes the result is a career changer. Sometimes it’s annoying or just so very very bad. But it is almost certainly better than doing the same crap forever.
Good ol’ Abraham Maslow, the American psychologist who gave us a pyramid and a hammer, is at it again with some pretty sensible insights.
This time he’s riffing on Aristotle’s function argument about what the heck we’re even doing here. Basically, we’re here to be useful.
A musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must write, if he is to be ultimately at peace with himself. What a man can be, he must be. This need we may call self-actualization.
(Apparently he was an old-school fan of the “he/him/man” pronoun. 🤷🏻♂️)
It’s one thing to find your purpose — and those who do so should consider themselves fortunate. But the real trick is to actually do something about it.
It refers to man’s desire for self-fulfillment, namely, to the tendency for him to become actually in what he is potentially: to become everything that one is capable of becoming.
Thank you for the reminder, Mazzy. Can I call you that? Because here’s another Mazzy who found her purpose.
Mental Break Town 