Useful Ideas for Your Life

Most people don't laugh after I tell a joke. I'm alright with that because most of the time the joke wasn't meant to make them laugh. I started focusing on making myself laugh before I tried making everyone else laugh and the result has been less awful sell-out jokes and more genuine laughter in my life as I am able to enjoy humor without having to force-feed it to everyone around me. 

It is only in this brief period of breathing and thinking that we try to divide ourselves according to some arbitrary measures. Let death serve as the ultimate equalizer in what it means to be alive as a human. Love, laughter, tears, loss, joy, success, all these things comprise a human existence regardless of "who they are" according to the way we try to divide ourselves. Don't forget that.  

Have you ever sat on one of those benches in a park that is dedicated to someone? You're sitting on a bench meant to mark someone's love and admiration for a life now gone. A life full of love, laughter, pain, success, joy, boredom, and discovery same as yours and yet lived and gone without you ever even realizing it existed in the first place. That is a sobering thought. But it is also a freeing one. Let death teach you yet another thing about what it means to experience life. Let the way death steals lives away before you even know they exist lift the burden off your shoulders and let you live your life more freely. 

Remember, someday you will not be able to send that text message to your mother. One day, there will be no one on the other end to receive it. So, send it now. Act now in full appreciation for what it means to have someone in your life. Do not find yourself dealing with the gaping hole that someone dying leaves without having ever lived with them fully aware of how precious those moments truly were.

Sometimes remembering that I am going to die brings a big smile to my face. There are countless instances within a week of my life where I mess up, make a fool of myself, do or say the wrong thing and generally just have reason to berate myself. In those moments, when I am beating myself up over something, remembering that I am going to die eventually suddenly puts the thing that was bothering me into perspective and reminds me how trivial so much of what we let bother us really is. I challenge you to think about how death would affect your own daily failures and mental battles. 

Suffering, pain, and death are of equal importance to joy, happiness and life. 

Sometimes I am unable to get off my bed and go out into the world because I am afraid. I am taken by this dreadful feeling that tells me all the reasons I shouldn't do something. Even though I know I want to do something, like ride my motorcycle somewhere new, shoot a video that is difficult and might not turn out, drive a long distance to find a new hike, wake up early to see the sunrise, I will get stuck under the weight of that fear we all know.

The thing is, we can chip away at that controlling fear. We can widdle it down until its strength is far lesser and our confidence and freedom is far greater. I wish I'd started intentionally chipping away at my fears sooner. 

Where would your mind go if you took the headphones out and stopped the continuous flow of music or entertainment or podcasts for a little while? I know it's uncomfortable. But what would happen? Could you find beauty in things you didn't before? Could you find resolutions to issues you'd been wrestling with in the back of your mind? Could you find stillness and here-ness? Where would your mind go? 

Last week I sent a very firm but humble "no" to someone asking for some of my time. I had never quite done that before. It felt strange at first but then I realized that I stood behind my reasoning. 

Saying no is not about keeping the goods scarce to increase demand or creating guardrails against the abuse of your time. Saying no is about coming to truly respect both your time and someone else's. I did not say no because I was tired, I said no because I am energized by the other ways I will be using that time. I did not say no because I did not want to do what was asked, I said no because I realized it would not have been the best use of both my time and the time of the other party involved. I challenge you to think about if you are saying no enough and also why you will be saying no at all. 

For a while, the endless guru-talk about why everyone should keep little Barnes and Noble-style notebooks in their back pocket with a worn-out pen and thoughtful look to the worn pages really turned me off. I avoided notebooks because I thought they were a fad.

After 3-years of keeping notebooks with me at almost all times, I cannot say that anything masterful or genius-like has taken place inside the pages I've filled. But I can tell you that my life has improved as a product of those pages. I don't know what the benefit would turn out to be for you, all I can say with confidence is that there will be a benefit if you make keeping a notebook a habit.