There are certain things I think about that completely change the way I feel.
In an instant I can feel hopeful, excited or happy.
Or I can feel tense, anxious or even depressed.
Actors literally use this as part of their work; hijacking a natural occurrence in humans.
We might as well picture the things that make us feel happy, motivated and excited right…?!
It seems a lot of your 30s is knowing the difference and getting the balance right.
How do you know?
If you’re ever bored with your life I think the antidote is to put yourself at the edge of your ability in some way.
How far can you run?
Can you talk to a stranger for an hour?
How many press ups can you do?
If you find your limit and then actively work to extend beyond it, life gets way less boring.
…won’t get you there.
And by the same token, you can’t get where you’ve never been by doing what you’ve always done.
Cause and effect is important to notice. They say if you don’t measure it, it can’t improve.
Some things are easy to measure. How many words you wrote on a page. How much weight you can lift at the gym. Other things are harder to pin down.
But if we can figure out a way to quantify the things we actually want to improve, to measure them somehow, we start to see the cause and effect of our own actions. When I do this, this happens. And once you can see that, you can adjust.
So what do you want to improve at? And how can you measure it, so you can actually improve it?
This is the one reason why everyone in the entire world loves movies. It’s called obstacle and intention.
A character has a thing they want to do, an intention. And they have an obstacle, something standing in their way. We love watching people overcome an obstacle to get their intention.
You’re in a movie called your life.
Thinking of it this way, obstacle and intention, is really useful because it helps us get clear about two things: A, our intention, what we want. And B, what is the obstacle?
Have you ever thought about what actually stands in your way? For instance, if you wanted to cut down on eating sugar, that’s your intention. Your obstacle might be that there’s just a lot of sugar lying around your house. Without this frame of obstacle and intention, you might not have even seen that obstacle so clearly.
Start treating your life a little bit like a movie. What is your intention? What’s the obstacle? And instead of just fighting the obstacle, you could just remove it and be the hero of your own story.
Ever feel like you’re drifting through life?
Here’s one thing I learned that changed everything for me: drifting through life, or drifting through an experience, comes when you don’t actually know what you want.
Have you ever heard someone say you can’t get where you want to go if you don’t know where you want to go? It’s like jumping in the car, opening Google Maps, but never putting in a destination. Just driving, and driving, and then wondering why you’re never getting there.
The thing that really, really helps me is to set an outcome, to set an intention. What that means is simply stating what you want.
If you wake up in the morning and you’re heading to work feeling bored or feeling angry, it’s probably because you’re just at the whim of whatever your day brings. Setting an outcome is being intentional about what you want that day to bring. It’s as simple as: today I want to find out three new facts about my coworker. Or, today I want to find a new way to have fun with my family.
Just simple little objectives you give yourself. And what that means is you’re not just at the whim of the day. You’ve set yourself a destination.
Stop drifting through life. Set an outcome for the day.
They say we overestimate what we can achieve in a year and underestimate what we can achieve in a decade.
That’s about expectation and perspective.
If we can arrange those in ourselves to serve us, there’s no limit to what we can do across our lifetime.
This is the only life we have and we if can engage with it charismatically we’ll get the best out of it and put the best into it.
