Welcome, I continue to think and work on developing content that provides thoughts, experiences, and incites. Hopefully along the way I am helping some readers out there in any way possible. My mission is to make a difference the lives of others.
The content I share consists of information related to the books I read, audiobooks I listen to, podcasts I listen to , videos I watch, experiences I’ve lived, and conversations I have had. Without limitations to other aspects or learning or thoughts.
Story I’ve read: MASK- Patrick Hoban
“As people, we very often tend to put on a happy face (mask) around friends when we are not feeling that way at all, we do voluntary things (help someone with something) that we complain about later on, we work in jobs that we don’t like (but put on a happy face when our boss is around), and we stay married to people that we aren’t happy with. (Don’t worry, I’m not going to put you in a state of depression with all of this…….)
I think that the most unfortunate part of people wearing masks is that we are not being our true selves nor are we living our truest lives. This causes us stress because, unconsciously, we know it, too. We have been taught to do it by our families or by society and I don’t really think that most of us realize that we are doing it.
Here is a very important point – I’m not saying that we should go around and be grumpy most of the time, that we should quit our jobs or stop helping friends, and Lord knows, we definitely shouldn’t end our marriages. What I’m saying is that we need to find happiness and peace IN these things. We need to find the happiness in our loving friendships, we need to feel the gratitude that our friends share with us when we help them, we need to find the goodness / happiness / purpose / meaning in our work, and we need to appreciate our relationships much, much more.
Imagine if we showed everyone our true selves, and those true selves were filled with the love of friends, the gratitude of friends and strangers, the purpose and meaning of a job we chose to love, and relationships that we chose to work hard at filling with love and appreciation and dedication. Imagine how your life would be if you did that. I can imagine it for me…….and it is a great life.
We don’t need to be perfect. We definitely don’t need to act like we are perfect to everyone around us. What we need to do is to take off our masks, see how beautiful each person is without them, and then love each other. If I am having a bad day but I am surrounded by loving, caring people, it becomes so much easier for me to then choose to have a good day! The key is to surround yourself with people who love you and care about you – and to love / care about the people that you work with and live with!”
The author of this, is one of the most inspiring individuals I have met in my life. Proof that you can accomplish amazing things and still remain a great giving person while being honest, open, and committed to the concepts that I work towards learning and sharing myself.
Audiobook I’m enjoying: Essentialism
The gist of this book thus far is prioritizing the most important things and outsourcing the rest. Learning to say no to the many things, so you can say yes to the most important things. Greg McKeown talks about the importance of prioritizing sleep for optimal creativity, efficient thinking, and brain function to best perform the following day. I myself fall vicim to the idea that I can live off of less sleep and grunt my way through tasks. Although the body was found to survive off of 4 hours of sleep, it does not necessarily mean the body can function progressively or efficiently. We are in survival mode at that point in time, without the ability to thing productively. There are numerous research articles that support sleep, so much so that some Silicon Valley companies have gone far enough to restrict coming to work if you have not slept the night before. Essentialism talks about the doing the most efficient tasks with intention, opposed to doing any available task which turns out to be more “busy work”.
The “busy work” can become very time consuming and in some cases will result in never being complete. This is why it is so important to give ourselves time to stop, think, plan, prioritize, outsource, and focus. We are all given the same 24 hours in a day, “I do not have enough time” is a lie. “I do not care enough to prioritize time” does not sound great but it is the non sugar coated truth. We let our health fail and we blame family, work, household chores, studies, or an other seemingly convincing lie we can latch on to that sounds convincing and run with it. It is in fact too easy to prioritize other tasks that seem to be short term, “once I finish this project”, “once I finish this class”, “once I finish the dishes, laundry, delivery, pick up, mow the lawn, pull the weeds, shovel the snow, watch this episode….” there are limitless amounts of tasks we can think of that can consume our time. There are only a few things that deserve the priority of our time. This is one book I think we all could learn from, regardless of what phase of life we are in. It might be the subtle nudge to take your life to the next level, in your health, career, retirement experience, relationship experience…
There are several times where I have come across the concepts of: “If its not a hell yes, it’s a no”
Feeling the need to serve everyone, means you’re serving no one well. Every time you say yes to one thing, it is naturally a no for another thing that may come your way.
Questions: What are three things you can do today that will set your future self up for success? (Consider relationships, business/career, and health)
Bonus question: What were things you said yes to that you should adjust and now say “no”.
Actions: Write down three big wins that are most important to you that you can do today, then again the next day. If other tasks come up that draw you away from those goals, say no.
Please feel free to share, this content to help others. Fill me in on content you would like to see more or less of. Have a great day!
Leave a Reply