Playing to Lose

I’ve been doing quite a bit of thinking about fear lately…and I think I’d like to share a story with you all.  Many people actually aren’t aware of this, but I spent a good portion of my life struggling with a paralyzing fear of social interaction.  In school, I wasn’t able to look people in the eye when I talked to them, and I mumbled at a level slightly below the range of human hearing.  As a result, I felt like I had earned a reputation as one of the “weird kids,” because all of my conversations looked like I wasn’t talking to anyone…and just sort of whispering to the floor all the time.  As funny as it seems in retrospect, it was really a terrible time for me.  I only had a few real friends…no chance with girls at all…and I eventually had to undergo a couple of IQ tests because some of my teachers were convinced that I might have been a bit “special.”  It turns out that I placed fairly high above normal…borderline genius, in fact…but because of  my fear, many people thought that I should have been in a special needs class.

I played sick on days when I was supposed to give a speech or a presentation, and instead of opting to do a make-up performance, I took the zero instead.  Giving speeches and making presentations caused my hands to shake so badly that I could almost never finish, anyway, so I figured there was no point.

That is what our fears have the potential to do to us.  They’re insidious monsters that roam around the shadows of our mind, forcing us to run from them and create safety zones in our minds…setting up barricades and roadblocks to keep them from getting in.  But guess what?  When we do that, we also keep ourselves from getting out.  I was trapped in my head for almost ten years, spending so much of my life hating myself and hating my fear for what it did to me.

But when I graduated from high school, and I really had the time to stop and look into the face of the fear monster, I decided to stop running from it…and start studying it.  And I happened up a realization that I wish I had stumbled on far earlier in my life.  Fear is not really a monster at all.  It is the test that life has given you…to see if you are worthy of the things that you want most.

In truth, fear is nothing more than a cardboard dragon that guards a treasure trove of untold riches.  Your greatest desires are in that trove.  Your greatest hopes.  Your greatest dreams.  All you have to do to get it…is walk past the beast.  And the funny thing is, the dragon won’t even put up a fight.  Because it’s NOT REAL.

But so many of us never gather up the courage to figure that out, do we?  I know I didn’t.  We see the things that we want in the distance…and we see this great, monstrous thing guarding them.  But most of us don’t have the balls(or the…ovaries? I guess?) to think about facing it, let alone touch it to see if it’s real or not.  We just see a terrifying vision, and we turn tail.  But when we run from our fears…how many of us realize that we are also running from our dreams?

In all the years I spent fearing social interaction, one of my biggest dreams was one that almost every awkward teen has: to find someone to fall in love with.  But unless you’re Edward Scissorhands, it’s incredibly difficult to get anyone to fall in love with you without social interaction.  I kept shunning social situations…and I kept missing out.  Much later in life, I learned that I’d missed out on quite a few opportunities for love because I was busy feeling sorry for myself.  I had kept my head down in fear and shame, and I had failed to see some of the things that were right in front of me.

So take hold of your life.  Walk past that dragon.  And the next one.  And the next one.  I guarantee you that each fear and each cardboard dragon that you conquer will yield a new achievement for you…a new dream reached…a new goal achieved…and if, for some reason, you don’t reach your dreams, at least you’ve got a sweet new collection of cardboard dragons…:D.  So why stay idle?  Why play it safe?  Why spend the rest of your life running from a monster that doesn’t really exist?  We can’t let our fear keep us from taking chances.  No matter how great the fear, we need to give it a shot.  Because life truly is shorter than we think…and as the great Wayne Gretzky once said, “You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.”

Thank you for taking the time to read and grow with me, friends.  May each new day bring you a new dragon conquered, a new mountain climbed, and a new outlook forged.  Namaste.

This particular post was inspired by a friend of mine who mentioned my blog in passing, saying, “Wow, you’re really turning into a regular self-help guru, aren’t you?”  And while I’m sure this was said with the best of intentions, it got me a little down.

You see, I’ve never really liked the sound of the “self-help” title.  I may have mentioned this in previous articles, but I’ve spent far too much of my time as a young man wandering through the self-help aisles of Guam’s local bookstores.  And all that time spent amidst those aisles has taught me almost nothing, save for the fact that if you want self-help…you need to start helping yourself.

Even the term “self-help” holds a strange contradiction in its nature.  By its name, it implies that we all have the capacity somewhere within ourselves to solve our own problems.  Yet we have to buy these books and listen to other people tell us how to do that.  I would go so far as to say that these books often hinder our ability to help ourselves, because they cause us to hand over all responsibility for our behavior to them.  If we don’t succeed, it’s not our fault.  Because we are supposedly no longer the ones responsible.  Some of us can become so dependent on these “self-help” books that we actually stop practicing the skills that we really need to overcome our problems, like self-control and willpower.  And without honing these skills, they weaken over time, leaving us susceptible to even more problems.

In this sense, the self-help industry isn’t really all that different from a religion.  Millions of people subscribing to the Self-Help Scriptures, giving up responsibility for their own actions and placing all their trust in a higher power that may or may not answer their prayers.  Being a Catholic that spent several years studying Zen Buddhism, I’ve always found it interesting that one of the key tenets of the Buddhist belief system is to detach ourselves from earthly bonds.  All answers come from within, not from some external source.  Not even the God that you choose to worship.

And it’s not that religion doesn’t teach us useful things.  It’s just that when you subscribe to a religion, and you follow it unquestioningly, you are ultimately giving up control of yourself.  It’s fine to have faith.  Everyone believes in something.  But there is a line between having faith and worshipping blindly.  Because blind worship is the reason that the self-help industry is thriving in America.

That’s why I don’t take well to being referred to, even jokingly, as a “self-help guru.”  I don’t think that any real productivity blogger does.  We don’t know everything.  Hell, the only thing that we can be sure of knowing in this life is that we don’t know anything…lol.  My words aren’t intended to be taken as gospel.  They’re intended to provoke thoughts and discussion.  Because there are no such things as absolute answers, and I don’t assume that I can give you any.  Nobody should.  The best teachers will never give you the answers outright.  That completely circumvents the point of learning.  The true teachers just give you gentle hints and systems that you can use to figure the answer out for yourself.  That way, you eventually develop the skills that allow you to progress on your own.  That’s true self-help.

Of course, the self-help industry isn’t completely devoid of solid content, and there are still quite a few bright stars out there that are worth giving a listen to.  My personal favorite bloggers are Seth Godin, and fellow Guamanian Leo Babauta, who are both amazingly talented writers in the fields of productivity.  These guys are extremely good at creating thought-provoking discussions while leaving the ball of personal responsibility in your court.  I also enjoy reading the various contributions over at Pick The Brain, Dumb Little Man, and Stepcase Lifehack, though the quality of the contributions at those sites can vary from writer to writer.  My favorite thing about these sites is that no matter what life path you choose…their advice is intended to help you along that path, not try to push you down it.  If you’re going to seek help from anywhere outside of yourself, I highly recommend avoiding the self-help section at first, and instead try doing a little introspective thinking about your problems, meditating, or visiting one of these productivity sites.  For the majority of people, this will save a lot of time and effort.  And at the very least, it will save you the cost of the dozen or more books you would have bought to reach the same conclusion…;).

If you liked this article, you may also like: Who’s In Control of Your Life? Thank you for reading, friends. May you always pursue the greater knowledge, ask the higher questions, and live your best lives.  Namaste.

Suggested Reading:

Self Help Doesn’t Work

The Huffington Post: Why Self-Help Usually Doesn’t Work…and What Always Does.

PsyBlog: Is Modern Self-Help Just a Massive Money-Making Scam?

In its widest possible sense…a man’s Self is the sum total of all that he can call his, not only his body and his psychic powers, but his clothes and his house, his wife and children, his ancestors and friends, his reputation and works, his lands and horses, and yacht and bank-account. All these things give him the same emotions. If they wax and prosper, he feels triumphant; if they dwindle and die away, he feels cast down.

-William James

With Halloween right around the corner, I thought it would be a good time to talk about masks and superheroes…and the different roles that each of us plays ever day.

I think that each of us has a variety of masks that we have to don each time we step into the company of others.  At work, I have to put on my Professional mask.  When I’m out with friends having dinner and drinks, I put on my Social mask.  When I’m home, I put on my Family mask.  And there’s a dozen other masks that I put on, depending on the role I have to play.  But I often feel the need to step back and wonder…which of these masks is really me?  I know how to play all of my roles well…but how well do I know how to play myself?

I often wonder if each of us has these moments…moments where our identities blur together and obscure the people that we really are.  What is my role?  How do I define myself?  Who am I?

But I think the truth of it is that time spent worrying about what our “true” natures are is time that could be better spent on higher pursuits.  Like the rest of the universe, our true selves are always in motion…and ever-changing.  There could never be a single role that defines us.  We are every role that we play, and we are none of them.  For some of us, that might seem like an extremely vague, Zen-like concept to come to grips with.  But think of it as trying to name a moment before it passes.  The second you even begin to think about the moment, it will be long gone.  It is our nature to want uniformity…to want constancy.  It’s comforting.  But life is not uniform.  Life is not constant.  Things change.  And so will we.

Lessons from Superman

Many of us try to fight off this bittersweet fact by trying to wear one of our masks all the time, hoping that eventually the mask will become a part of us.  We think that by doing this, we will eventually become the best that we can be at that chosen role.  We think that focusing on a single role will make us superhuman.  But let me ask you something very important…why doesn’t Superman want to be Superman all the time?  As Superman, he’s the best he is at what he does.  He makes the world a better place every day.  He’s beloved by millions of people.  But he chooses to live out most of his day as mild-mannered Clark Kent.

Superman gets the recognition, but he isn’t recognized for who he is.  He’s recognized for what he does, and what he stands for.  Many accomplished individuals know this feeling.  Clark Kent, on the other hand, doesn’t seek recognition.  He just wants a simple human connection…to be accepted and loved for his faults and his foibles, and not for any exceptional gifts.  But he accepts that he can play both roles.

Why?  Because this man is not just Superman.  He’s not just Clark Kent.  He’s not even just Kal-El, for my fellow nerds who know him by his birth name.  He is a complete individual that embraces all of his roles, and accepts that each part of his life can have a serious and lasting effect on the others.  Superman isn’t a hero because of his powers.  Even villains can have powers.  He is a hero because he tempers his strength with the humility of his secret identity.  And that is sometimes what we need to do.

Being a hero…being the best that we can be and fulfilling our potential…doesn’t come from focusing purely on one aspect of your life.  It comes from allowing every part of our lives to blend together into a cohesive whole.  True power comes from every part of you…not just the part that you present to the world.  Even the best of our qualities must be balanced out, just as the darkness of Yin balances out the pure light of Yang.  You must temper your perceived strengths and balance them, or else they will become weaknesses.  So put down the masks(your figurative masks, of course), stop trying to put labels on different areas of your life, and just be. Because you are you.  And nothing else.

Thank you for reading, friends…I hope that you all have a safe and happy Halloween, and I hope to see you here again soon…:).  Namaste.

In honor of the upcoming Halloween holiday, I’d like to present something slightly more gruesome than you’re used to…but, hopefully, no less helpful…lol.

Temptation is an evil that lurks everywhere in our day-to-day lives.  It nudges us to stop working.  It urges us to quit dieting.  It makes us inactive, undisciplined, and unproductive.  And worst of all, after we give in to its siren call and enjoy the short-term reward that it offers…it turns around and makes us feel terrible for surrendering to its advances.  But that is the power of temptation.  It has a way of finding our vulnerabilities…our weak points…and using them to lull us into a state of submission and shame.

So how can we stop such a devious enemy? 

Cut Off Its Head and Gain Its Power.

Let me explain…

Among some of the indigenous tribes of South America, it was not an uncommon practice for warriors to cut off the heads of fallen enemies and take them as trophies.  It was believed that taking these trophies from their fallen foes would increase the warriors’ power and protect them from evil spirits.  It’s a tradition that has appeared in many forms in various warrior cultures and castes throughout history.

And as weird as it seems, it’s exactly what we need to think about when we are fighting off temptation.

We all know that our struggles with temptation aren’t a once-in-a-while thing.  They are things that we must face on a regular basis.  We are, all of us, warriors battling for control of our own lives.  And every decision that we make is a fight against temptation.  Do we want to take the easy way out, or do we want to do what’s best?

When we choose to take the easy way out…when we let temptation win…that temptation takes a little piece of our spirit from us.  It makes us feel terrible that we gave in to it.  We tell ourselves that we are weak.  Then, we start believing ourselves and we become weak.

And this does nothing but leave us vulnerable for more and more attacks from temptation, with every strike leaving us weaker and more fallable.

But if we shield ourselves from temptation…and pursue our chosen paths, even when the way becomes obscured and difficult to follow…we are the ones who prove victorious.  And when we win in our battle against temptation, we tell ourselves that we are strong.  We become strong.

Become the Defenders of Your Own Minds.

Every time we dominate our temptations, we subconsciously take a trophy from their fallen forms.  But instead of taking a head or an ear from our enemy, we take away memories, both conscious and subconscious.  These memories bolster us.  They reinforce our willpower.  And they make us stronger in spirit.

So the next time you find yourself faced with temptation, remember that you are a warrior of life, squared off against your mortal enemy.  And even though these battles might not be life-or-death matters, they’re still just as important, because they dictate who’s really in control of your willpower and your mind.  They’re not battles to the death…but they are battles for your life.  May you prove ever victorious.

Thank you for reading, friends.  Live well, fight hard, and I hope that you receive all that you deserve.  Namaste.

When the burdens of life weigh heavy on our shoulders and the world feels like it’s about to come crashing down, it can sometimes be difficult to weather the storm.  Loss, worry, and pressure have a habit of swirling together to form an avalanche of stress.  An avalanche that can crush us beneath its increasingly powerful progress if it isn’t stopped right away.

Stress can be a huge drain on our energy reserves, devouring our enthusiasm and keeping us from enjoying the lives as we were truly meant to.  And with every drop of enthusiasm it steals from us, the stronger and more ominous it grows.  So what can we do to stop its terrible onslaught?

There are a multitude of therapeutic schools and techniques when it comes to managing stress.  Some of us quiet our minds through meditation.  Some of us work our issues out through art or exercise.  But sometimes these techniques just aren’t enough to lift the burden off of you and keep stress from invading your life.  Sometimes there’s still a tiny inner beast: a small, raging part of your soul that cries out to be given voice…cries out for free reign…cries out to be unleashed.  It squirms with the seeming injustice of what life has piled at your feet.  It throws itself against its cage and lashes out at you from within.  And no amount of calming or exercise is going to keep it silent forever.  Ultimately, it needs to be set free, or it will compound your stresses throughout your entire life.

So how do we let our inner beasts free?  By letting them do what they do best.  Roar! Whenever I find myself feeling crushed beneath the weight of my stresses, I like to find a nice quiet place where I won’t startle anyone…and I roar out every last drop of my frustrations.

I focus on channeling all of my rage…all my sadness…and all my discontent…into a single swirling ball of red-hot fury.  I gather all that negativity together, I breathe in deep, and I visualize it materializing at the base of my diaphragm like a ball of fire.  And once I’ve gathered enough air, I brace myself and let it all out into the cosmos with a loud, booming roar.  It rids me of stress.  It frees up space in my body for more positive things.  And it lets the beast back out into the world where it belongs.

Now, to some people, it might seem counter-intuitive to find inner calm by making noises like a wild animal.  But it makes a lot of sense if you think about it.  If your spirit is constantly filled with turmoil and strife, how are you supposed to make room for happiness and fulfillment?  As we’ve heard over and over again in Zen literature(or various martial arts movies, if reading isn’t your bag), if you want to your cup to be filled, you must first empty it.

At first, roaring out your stress might make you feel a little uncomfortable.  We’ve been conditioned for our entire lives to act like “civilized” people…to hold in our frustrations, be courteous, and not cause a ruckus.  But we already spend our entire lives worrying about what we’re “supposed” to act like…that doesn’t make us happy, it just creates more stress.  And that does nothing but make our inner beasts stronger.

So roar, even if it feels uncomfortable at first.  Start small if you have to.  Give a little growl.  That’s socially acceptable, right?  Then turn up the volume a little bit.  Then a little bit more.  And I guarantee that in no time you’ll be working your way up to letting loose with a full-on earth-shattering roar.  It’ll set your inner beasts free.  It’ll lighten your burdens.  And it’ll keep you pushing forward, happy and stress-free.  So go forth and roar.  Roar!  ROOOOOOOAAAAAARRRRR!

Thanks for reading, friends.  I hope that this day finds you happy, healthy, and stress-free.  Namaste…:).

William Shakespeare once said that all the world’s a stage and all of us are but players upon it.  And there have been a lot of different interpretations of this famous saying throughout the years.  But I’ve always found it to mean one thing: the roles that we play are the roles that we come to fulfill, and the people that we pretend to be are the people that we ultimately become.

If you act as your best self…you will become your best self.  And if you resign yourself to being mediocre…then you will become mediocre.

When you deny yourself a superior role, you are robbing yourself of the potential for greatness that all human beings are born with.

So why would you not choose to act as your best self, in both your personal life and your work life?

If you play the leader, you become the leader.

Most of us dream about being leaders one day, whether we want to believe it or not.  We want to become leaders of our field, leaders of our teams, or just leaders of ourselves.  But in order to create and fulfill that role, you need one crucial element: enthusiasm.  Be enthusiastic about the role that you’re about to play, especially if you plan to become a leader.

Enthusiasm is infectious.  It draws people to you like moths to a candle.  No good leader is ever without it.  Be enthusiastic about the things that you say.  And when someone responds to the things you say, be enthusiastic about your responses.  When you radiate that level of intensity, people respond positively to it.  It pumps you up, it gets people smiling, and it gets heads nodding, including your own.

There are many people that try to be leaders by withholding enthusiasm.  They think that a leader should be reserved, realistic, and “professional.”  But the problem is that these people don’t act professional because they are professional.  They act professional because they’re afraid to demonstrate enthusiasm and intensity, and they think that acting more reserved will allow them to play it safe.

Now comes the natural question: how can we become enthusiastic if we’re not naturally enthusiastic?

Well, as Dale Carnegie once said,

Act enthusiastic and you will be enthusiastic.

When you come up with an idea that lights a small spark in you, you need to start acting excited about it.  Because when you get excited about your ideas, that small spark spreads like wildfire to the people around you.  And that infectious energy will ultimately funnel back to you, feeding that little spark until it becomes a raging inferno of motivation.

So act enthusiastic about everything that you want to pursue.  As long as you throw everything you have into it, the people around you will believe your enthusiasm is real.  And the more you perform your act, the more real it becomes…and the more you grow into it.  Even if your enthusiasm doesn’t initially come from a place of genuine emotion…in time, it will.

Enthusiasm, like willpower and determination, isn’t a characteristic that occurs naturally in people.  It is a skill that has to be cultivated and strengthened with practice over time.  So get out there and start practicing!

Thanks for reading, friends.  I hope that your enthusiasm grows in your work life, your home life, and anything that you choose to pursue.  Namaste…:).

Hello, everyone.

During my extended absence, I got caught up in a strange ordeal.  While laboring away at my “real” job, I ended up writing copy for a type of client that many independent contractors dread: the backseat driver.  As a professional, I obviously can’t name names.  But I was constantly trying to fight an uphill battle with this client to justify my word choices, getting critiqued every step of the way.  I finally realized what level of hell I was in when they told me that my words were “too upbeat and exciting.”  I was writing a brochure for a vacation resort.

So, to cut the encounter short and keep myself from going insane, I caved.  I wrote what they wanted, and made a mental note to never put myself through that again if I could avoid it.

The experience was so stressful that I decided to take an impromptu break from work, just to get my mind back in the right place.  And I came back here…to do what I love most…:).

Oftentimes, when it comes to careers, we feel forced to choose between pursuing our passions and pursuing a paycheck.  Ultimately, it boils down to a single question:  Where do you get your fulfillment from?

Personally, I became a freelance writer for two reasons:  I love freedom.  And I love to write.

And even though copywriting gets the bills paid, it’s not what gets my blood flowing in the morning.  You know what gets me excited?  Love.  Life.  And this blog.

Playing to Lose

I’ve always prided myself on the fact that Playing to Lose is ad-free, and a lot of my readers have asked me why I’ve never attempted to monetize the site.  I pull in modest numbers(close to 1,000 unique visitors/day, nothing incredible), but I’ve never tried to capitalize on my traffic with ad spaces or affiliate links.   The reason is simple.  I don’t monetize the site because I didn’t start this blog with the intent of turning it into a business venture.  I created it as an escape hatch.

You see, I spend the better part of my day working for clients that want me to write about things that don’t really matter.  My entire copywriting career is littered with vested interests and skewed viewpoints.  And so I created this place as sort of a sanctuary.  There’s nothing corporate here.  Nothing commercial.  Just me, writing about the things that matter to me.

Of course, I’m not leaving out the possibility of one day leaving copywriting behind and dedicating myself exclusively to the world of personal development.  If I could actually make a living exclusively from the work I do here, that would be an amazing dream to achieve.  But in the meantime, it’s nice to have a place that I can escape to when the stresses and pressures of the corporate world grow too large for me to bear.  It’s what keeps my true passion for writing alive while I do what I must to get the bills paid.

To me, Playing to Lose is more than an blog.  It’s an open forum for knowledge…a place where someone like me can share their thoughts with honesty, minus any corporate intervention.  It’s a place for discussion.  Perhaps my words will help someone.  Perhaps they won’t.  But knowing that they might…well, that’s worth more than any paycheck.

So take a good, hard look at your life.  Think about whether you’re pursuing your passions, or a paycheck, and ask yourself that simple question:  “Where am I getting my fulfillment from?”  Because knowing the true source of the joy in your life is what will keep you pursuing the things that you love…and stop you from wasting time on the things that don’t matter.

Thank you for reading, friends.  I’m glad that I could share my thoughts with you today, and I’m glad to have readers as exceptional as yourselves to keep the conversation alive.  Namaste…:).

Image source: http://noxizmad.free.fr/

In my younger days, I happened across a copy of “Bushido: The Soul of Japan”, Inazo Nitobe’s groundbreaking century-old treatise on samurai and the warrior way.  As someone who’d been raised on martial arts flicks and samurai movies, I was incredibly excited.  I was expecting to read of famous duels, swordsmanship, and legendary samurai.  But what I found between those pages was much more.  So much more.

In modern terms, many people have come to associate the term “warrior” with someone who endorses and excels in warfare.  And while the latter may be true, the former almost certainly is not.  A true warrior, like any artist, hones their mind and their body purely towards the pursuit of their chosen path.  Each stroke of the sword, like the stroke of a paintbrush, is meant to be performed with purpose and feeling.  A true warrior moves with purpose…and lives with purpose…because any moment could be their last.

I often re-visit Nitobe’s text and many others like it…because every new venture into that world brings me new insight on how to live and improve my life.  But more and more, I find myself wondering…where have all our warriors gone?  Every day, I see people who think about changing their lives.  I see people that talk about changing their lives.  But I almost never see people that put those things into action.

Warriors don’t think.  Warriors don’t talk.  Warriors do.

The true nature of a warrior does not lie in their weapon.  The true nature of a warrior does not lie in their armor.  It lies in their hearts.  It is the resolve to choose a path…to begin walking down it…and to pursue it unfailingly until the task is completed.  Ultimately, that is what makes a warrior.  The courage to live your life with purpose.  The courage to rise against adversity.  The courage to stand up.  And stand up again.  And stand up again, as many times as it is required.

How Long Will You Wait?

There was something else I was thinking about as I was re-reading Nitobe’s work.

In our society, there’s this archetypal system of working hard your entire life and saving up, so that you can enjoy life later on.  But why would you not enjoy life while you’re still young and able to fully embrace those fleeting moments?

I’d like to talk to you for a moment about the symbol of Japan, and the warrior caste.  This symbol is the sakura, or cherry blossom.

This beautiful blossom is an incredibly profound symbol for the people of Japan…because when it reaches the peak of its beauty, it detaches itself from the branch.  And it falls to the ground to die, having served its purpose and made the world a more beautiful place.

We are all, like the sakura, awaiting our inevitable journey to the waiting earth below.  Some of us will reach it early.  Some of us will reach it late.  But many of us forget about reaching it altogether.  We live our lives like they have no end.  Work, work, work.  Save, save, save.  Someday, someday, someday.

But what if someday never comes for you?  Will you have served your purpose?  Will you have reached your dreams?

A warrior knows that their days are numbered, and lives every day like it’s their last.  They fill their days with meaning, and let no movement or thought go to waste.  You can see this in the art forms that the samurai pursued in their leisure time, like the haiku, the tea ceremony or the art of flower arrangement.  You can feel it in the simplicity of their Zen meditations and lifestyle.  No movements went to waste.  No thoughts went to waste.  They lived their lives on purpose, and with purpose.

And here we sit in the modern world…watching television, making small talk, and bickering over things that ultimately have no consequence…and again, I ask…where have all our warriors gone?  And will we find them again before it’s too late?

Thank you for reading, friends.  I hope that you enjoyed this article, and that one day, you will ultimately find the way to your own inner warrior.  Have a great day…:).

I’ve spent quite a bit of time bandying back and forth about the various concepts and implications behind motivation.  What motivation is, what causes it, what influences it, etc.  And I think that that’s important knowledge to have, because it’s easier to set a plan in motion when you understand why each step is necessary.

But a lot of my readers have been asking me for more specific guidelines.  Some folks want me to skip past the why’s, the what’s, and the wherefore’s, and start laying down some hard-and-fast motivational tactics.  So I’ve whipped up a handful of small motivational hacks, just to whet your appetites for greater things to come…:).  Here we go.

Tip #5: Become your own Frankenstein!

Let’s face it.  One of the main purposes of motivation is to serve as a catalyst for personal change.  There’s something about yourself that you want to modify.  But you don’t know how to go about it, and you don’t know how to get started.  The first step is to start re-constructing yourself.  If you’re not happy living within the framework of your personality now…if you’re too negative or too lazy or you don’t feel like you’re good enough…then you need to deconstruct the person you were, and fashion something altogether new from the pieces.  A new frame of being that you will use to become an unstoppable juggernaut of confidence and determination!

It starts with creating a vision of your ideal self…the person that you want to be more than anyone else.  Construct this vision as intricately as you can.  After all, this is going to be your own invincible creation.  And then, once you have lovingly constructed this new self…begin living into it.  Imagine pouring your old self into this new mold…and growing to fill it with every passing day.  With careful attention to detail, and a little jolt of motivational lightning, you’ll soon find yourself becoming the confidence monster that you’ve always dreamt of being.

Tip #4: Fake it until you make it!

For a lot of us, it’s hard to find the inspiration and the motivation to become better, stronger human beings.  We convince ourselves that we’re not capable of doing the things that we really want to do.  We tell ourselves to “be realistic.”  And that’s perfectly natural.  But we have to understand that, most of the time, realism is nothing more than a socially acceptable form of pessimism.  The people with the most consistent track records of success don’t think in terms of what is.  They think in terms of what could be.

If it’s difficult for you to imagine the potential within yourself, maybe you need to start lying to yourself a little bit.  Tell yourself stories about your future.  It doesn’t matter how fantastical or absurd the stories are, as long as they get your blood racing with excitement.  Because if you don’t have a concrete vision of your greatest self, how do you ever expect to live into it?

Tip #3: Step into the arena!

As human beings, we are historically proven to thrive on adversity.  Challenge has always been our greatest catalyst for growth.  It is the impetus that has kept mankind asking life’s great questions and pursuing the grandest of goals throughout history.  There is no person on the face of the planet that ever grew in body, mind, or spirit without adversity.

But modern society has babied us.  Progress has given way to convenience, and convenience has allowed us to get everything we need without ever having to leave our comfort zones.  As modern humans, we will actually go out of our way to avoid difficulties and conflict.  But if we live our lives without ever facing challenge – without ever seeking out adversity – how can we ever expect to grow as people?  Every so often, it becomes necessary to step into the arena of life, face our symbolic enemies, and strive against them as best we can.  Challenge and difficulty should never be things to fear, because it is only through encountering these things that we can achieve our true potential.

Tip #2: Hurry up and sit there!

Set aside the time and space to sit in silence at least once every day.  I’m not saying that you need to go so far as to meditate, although that’s my preferred method.  But I am saying that every once in a while, we need to isolate ourselves and spend some time alone with our thoughts.  Every day, we have to deal with the a multitude of other people…other ideas…other influences.  And it becomes difficult to cultivate our thoughts and allow them to grow.  Because our original thoughts are being drowned out by a sea of influential voices.

So what I’m suggesting is simple.  Turn the TV off.  Turn the computer off.  Put the book down.  And just sit awhile in silence.  Because it is only then…when all of the outside voices have been silenced…that our ideas can truly make themselves heard and known.

Tip #1:  ‘Downtown’ is not a place and ‘someday’ is not a time!

A lot of us have a bad tendency to set goals using phrases like, “I’m going to get fit.” or “I’m going to read more.”  Well, there’s some bad news on that front.  Phrases like “getting fit” and “reading more” aren’t real goals.  They’re vague ideas that can’t be implemented because you have no idea what the destination point is.  Let’s say you decide to take a cab somewhere…when the cabbie asks you where you want to go, do you just say,”Downtown”? No.  Because ‘downtown’ is not a place.  It’s a vague conceptual area that is impossible to reach.  You might actually have better luck if you asked the driver to take you to Hogwarts or Narnia.

It’s the same thing with ‘someday’.  If you’re going to say ‘someday’, you might as well say ‘never,’ because ‘someday’ is not a time.  And it gives you way far too much leeway to get lazy and start procrastinating.

If you’re going to set goals, you have to make them specific and quantifiable.  Otherwise, your brain will never be able to map out the best way to reach them.

Thank you for reading, friends!  I hope that today finds you all healthy, happy, and well, and I look forward to hearing of your progress in the future.  Namaste.

As I was getting up from my daily meditation this morning and walking to my desk, I spent a little time thinking about how much my meditation room-slash-study has changed over the years.  Right now, the whole place is practically empty.  Bare.  Clean.  And that’s how I like to keep it.  But once upon a time, there were piles of clothes in the corner…stacks of boxes in the closet…a pile of empty water bottles by my chair…and a stack of papers almost a foot high on my desk.

It’s funny to think how all the detritus of our lives can slowly and sneakily add up over the years.  Over the course of almost a decade, I let things carelessly slip and fall to the floor, unmindful of the fact that I was gradually cluttering up my study and my life.  Near the end of those dark days, it felt like every walk through my study was a trip through a museum dedicated entirely to useless things.  And every day it felt just a little bit harder to breathe in there.

The Clutter Monster

I think all of us has a part of our lives that we let fill up with clutter.  Our sanctuaries…our bodies…our minds…they can all fall victim to the ravages of time and carelessness.  It’s just a matter of letting small things slip over and over again.  Letting that empty bottle sit idly on your desk.  Eating that one candy bar before going to sleep.  Putting off that one work assignment until tomorrow.  But small things have a nasty way of adding up.  And soon that soda can multiplies into a veritable in-house landfill.  That candy bar becomes an unsightly belly bulge.  And that work assignment turns into a week of sleepless nights spent trying to catch up on lost time.

Many of the catastrophes in our lives are ones that we create ourselves.  And it’s not because we’re self-destructive.  It’s just that we’re creatures of habit.

It’s easy to put off a small thing like cleaning your dish when you’re done with it, or doing a set of push-ups in the morning.  It’s easy to say you’ll do it tomorrow.  But when you start putting things off on a regular basis, you start to unknowingly set routines for yourself.  And those routines are fraught with bad habits.

So how do you keep yourself from going down that road?  Or, more realistically, if you’re already down that road, how do you get back on the right track?  It’s really not that hard.

All habits, good and bad, are created equal.  That’s the good news.  They’re all equally easy to start, but they’re also equally easy to stop.  It’s just a matter of being mindful and starting small.

The Futility of “The Big Attempt”

Some of us live with our bad habits for so long that we become desensitized to them.  But every so often, we have brief moments of clarity where we realize painfully obvious things like “Man, this room is dirty!”, or “When did I get so fat?”.  And then we try to rectify the problem with one big attempt.  But that never works.  So we end up going back to our old routines the next day, like zombies.

For some reason, these sudden moments of clarity always make us feel like the clutter in our lives is just some humongous thing that just “happened” overnight.  But it’s not.  Clutter is not a single entity.  It’s a thousand tiny bad habits, piled on top of each other.  So if you’re going to unclutter your life, you’re not going to be able to do it all in one go.  You can’t just say, “I’m going to clean my entire house today and keep it clean forever!”  That’s not how it works.

So What Does It Take?

It takes small steps.  It takes repeated effort.  But most of all, it takes the diligence and mindfulness to stop letting your bad habits accumulate.  Because once you can stop the clutter monster from growing, you can finally start cutting it down to size.

Remember how your stack of bad habits got started.  Remember how so many small acts grew into something so powerful.  That’s something I want you to think about as you go on.  Not to make you feel guilty.  But to make you realize that just as the seeds of neglect can grow into a forest of clutter…the seeds of mindfulness can grow into a forest of clarity.  But it’s entirely up to you to choose which seeds you wish to plant.  And with time, I hope that you, too, can finally walk through your uncluttered life, breathing deep and free.

Thank you for reading, friends…may you spend each of your days breathing deep and free.  Namaste.

-Tom