The Exploration

  Live in the moment Moments flee faster when you don’t appreciate them. Some of the best moments of my life have happened so fast that I hardly remember them. I never fully was able to grasp the significance of the moment. Now being at such a different stage of life, I have learned to live in the present because the future is fake and the past is unchangeable. Why is the future fake? The future is fake because you can imagine it being whatever you want it to be. The truth is, it will never be what you expect it to be. You can only envision what it may be. If you do choose to envision your future, envision it being the best it possibly can be. Make your future a dream scenario. If you understand that the future is fantasy but envision it being the best it can be, it will be better than having a negative outlook on your future. The past is unchangeable. What is done cannot be undone. The past is simply a part of your story, what happened was meant to happen and it has completely mol...

  Invest in your social life Keeping friends is something we all want to do. Everyone loves the feeling of having a lot of friends. You feel like your social life is thriving and nobody can slow you down. When you are friends with a lot of people, you feel like you’re on top of the world. But do those friends fulfill you? Are all of those people worth your time and effort? I know a lot of the people that I was great friends with years ago are life-sucks. Being around them makes me more negative and disengaged. Those are the people I have chosen to give up on.  It is not easy to cut off friendships that have existed for years, but when those relationships no longer bear fruit, it is necessary. Why invest in something that you know won’t grow? You must choose quality friends and cut down on your quantity if you plan on growing yourself.  For the people that do inspire growth in you, show them that you value them. Give more time and money to the relationships that are useful...

  Walk with the past Lucky enough I am to be so close to where I grew up. Motifs hang with me through the years. Places that have remained unchanged take me back to a moment that passed decades ago. Grateful I am for the places I’d been and the places I’d seen when I was a teen.  Wishing these things would never change is what we do as we age. Reminiscing the times where it was simple and each day was a new adventure of its own. I ran so fast through these streets I knew, the sky was always so blue. Rerun now, is what I’d do, back to a time where skies were blue. Now I’ve grown and things have changed, places painted and rearranged. But now I sit in matted grass. Thinking about my amazing past.

  Days of rest As humans we put continuous stress on our bodies and minds. We live a cycle of stress and rest. If the amount of stress outweighs the amount of rest, a breaking point is reached. Once a breaking point is reached, typically a new standard is reached, but with this, a recovery is needed. We must weigh the benefits of continuing to work through the stress or take time to rest and recharge. When the stress creates such good results, it is tough to take time to recover, but it is most necessary. A day of stepping back from deep work and doing rather light mental and physical activity can be crucial for approaching the next level. My advice is to reflect on what your body needs. Make time to recover your mind and your body. Keep in mind the results that you will achieve in the future as a result of taking time to rest. Make time for yourself, and you will make time for yourself down the road.

  Enjoy the life you create I learned at a young age that not everyday will be the same. Some days will be cold and cloudy. Some days will be filled with work and monotony. But to appreciate the good days, we must live through the bad days.  Enjoyment typically is a result of some sort of pain. This pain could be the hours you spent working to get the money to pay for an experience. Or it is the physical agony your body feels after working out to achieve the figure you’ve always wanted. We must go through the pain to feel the achievement. Program your mind to enjoy the daily processes you create. Although pain may suck in the moment, think about where that pain will get you. Because you worked hard in this moment, you will realize future successes. Learn to enjoy the development phase, and the success will come that much easier.

  Self-awareness Self-awareness is the single biggest factor in creating a better version of yourself. Unless you are aware of who you are and how you are perceived, achieving your goals will never be possible. Let’s break it down. Self-acceptance is hard, we all know that. But looking in the mirror and realizing the person looking back is completely under our control, that is self-awareness. We must be aware of how we appear to ourselves. This means identifying those pre-conceived, subconscious thoughts that we feel that are holding us back. It means tracing back to why we feel the way we do about who we are. It means realizing that we can change it. You must grab your life by the reins and guide it the way you want it to go. The only person who can do this is you. The second way to achieve total self-awareness is realizing how you are perceived by others. This is a controversial point being that most say that others shouldn’t determine how you act, and they shouldn’t as much as y...

I quit making excuses Today I am happy to be who I am. It takes a lot for me to say that. Everybody fights through something in life. It may be an insecurity, or a tragedy, we all have something. It is easy to use that one thing as an excuse to why you are where you are. It is just as easy to use that one thing as a launch pad for becoming who you want to become. When we look at ourselves, we typically ask for more of something. What we want is more from ourselves. The act of making excuses is almost an addiction. We are enslaved by our excuse-making until we realize that we are the reason we aren’t who we want to be. The ability to do more begins when the excuses end. Look at yourself and realize it is just as easy to be who you want to be as it is to not.  Ownership has become the single biggest factor in creating what I want out of my life. I challenge myself each day to own my current situation. It is I who put me in the position I am right now. Every single bad thing, every si...

  Sunday Sentimentality Every Sunday I am going to dive deep back to a certain memory. Recollecting distinct things that have happened in my life has helped me learn and grow as a person. It also allows me to look back on all that I have done and be proud. Every experience you have encountered has sculpted who you are today. Be grateful for how far you’ve come and never regret it. Autumn Days are shortening and sunshine is diminishing. Trees hold on to the last of this season’s leaves they took months to create. Bags on the curb indicate the end of the crisp nights driving with the windows down. They signify the end of warm gatherings around a smoky fire pit. I hold on to this as I sit on a cold porch step in cotton sweats and a hoodie.  Tips of the grass once occupied by morning dew have gathered frost. I no longer wear a dirt-covered baseball cap but a woven beanie. Winter has not yet begun, but its presence can already be felt. A feeling of being frozen in life. A feeling o...

  Finding inspiration For me, inspiration seems to come when I do one thing out of the ordinary each day. With this, I still follow my common routine, but I leave time each day to do something different. It is crucial to add small breaks in your routine. This does not require breaking the routine, but rather allowing for space and time to do other things. A small time to do something outside of a routine can have a significant impact on inspiration. I find all sorts of inspiration in new experiences. Having the opportunity to talk to new people, explore new places, and partake in new activities has just as much as a person as my routine has. A routine sculpts a person to be who they are long term, but a break from that same routine inspires them to continue. Take some time to live as you grow.

  Create your “ why” To maintain your focus you must remember why you are doing it. Constitute a clear, concise “why” statement and live by it. If you simplify what you want, achieving goals becomes easier. Every single action you take should be a reflection of the “why” statement. Write this statement down in a place you will see it. Review it every single day. Know why you are waking up in the morning. Know what you want to achieve. Consistency in our habits is what makes us great. Sometimes you will fall down, but the best thing you can do is get back up and keep going.  Remember that your “why” statement can fluctuate. Your goals may change. The reasons you live your life may change. But that change should continue to focus around achieving overall happiness. Happiness is what we strive for, it’s why we do everything we do.  Want more money? Why? Because money buys time freedom. Time freedom is what we want. The ability to not work. The ability to take vacations. Th...

  Creating buy-in Many people have a tough time creating a work relationship that has respect, friendship, and professionalism at the same time. It is not an easy thing to do. When working with others, especially those who you are in charge of, you must create mutual respect first. To create mutual respect, you have to acknowledge that they have skills that you do not. Every single person brings a skill to the table. You are both in your individual position for a reason. You must make them aware that you appreciate them because you cannot do the job that they do.  It is easier to become friends with someone who you respect. A friendship will come much easier. A friendship includes learning more about each other, aside from work. Establishing a relationship that focuses more on the people than the work is crucial for overall quality of work.  The quality of work that a person does is a lot better when they are excited and happy to come to work. They excel when they have ot...

  Creating Happiness Happiness is a feeling that seems to be controlled by the external environment. People base their emotions on how things are going around them. What you must realize is that happiness is created from the inside. Happiness synthesis takes place within the brain. It is all about perception of your external environment. Therefore, if one changes their perception of what they see, they can change the status of their internal environment. It seems difficult. You might say, “How can you just tell yourself that you’re happy?” You can’t just tell yourself, that’s the thing. You must convince yourself. Let’s talk about what drives happy emotions. Typically, happiness is driven by increased endorphins, increased dopamine, and increased serotonin. So if you dive into what gives you each of those things, you can key in on what makes you happy. These three hormones account for the majority of our happiness. Dopamine makes you feel good, serotonin regulates your mood, and en...

  Focus I struggled for years to discover what I am truly passionate about. Not what peers or the media tells me I am passionate about, but what really matters to me. After much time I was able to finally pinpoint the things that matter most to me.  What did I do? I thought of the activities that bring me the most joy. I wrote them down. Then I pondered why those things bring me joy and established that reason as a passion. For example, I figured out that I really enjoy biking. I then thought about why I like biking. I like biking because it allows me to create a better relationship with my brother. I like biking because it allows me to be outside, which I love. I like biking because it keeps me physically fit. I like biking because it brings me back to when I was a kid. That is why I like biking. I established why I like it. I pinpointed why it makes me happy. If something makes you happy, pursue it. And I’m not talking short term lust, I am talking long term, real joy. Next,...

  Consistency Every day you show up, you are creating a better version of yourself. Not every day will be your best performance, because the word “best” is superlative, meaning there is nothing better. But by being consistent with your actions, you are making the chances of creating a new “best” more likely. It is not easy to be consistent, but the more consistent you are, the more likely you are to reach your goals. If you created a plot of how many times you would need to work on something to reach your goals, how long would it take? “It depends on how hard you work” you would tell me. Well of course.  10,000 is the number of hours you must work on something to become an expert. If that number, 10,000, is lengthened out over 50 years, you will be an expert in 50 years. Yay! It took you 50 years to reach your goal. This isn’t soon enough for you, you say. Okay let’s cut it in half. To achieve that goal in half the time you go from working on something 200 hours a year to 400 ...

  Self-discovery If you wish to leave an impact on others, you must discover what you are here for. Everyone has a calling, a reason to live everyday. Sometimes self-discovery takes years, or decades, but once you reach it, you can finally impact others the way you were created to. Discovering yourself is not easy, however. You will experience many crucial moments in life before you realize what it is that you are meant to do. It requires being in tune with what is happening around you and that stems from emotional awareness. What is emotional awareness? Simply put, emotional awareness is understanding how others may interpret a moment or situation. The way something makes you feel may be completely different than how it makes somebody else feel. Once you realize that, life seems to become easier and things make more sense. You have to embrace the fact that you are not always right. You have to be willing to learn from your mistakes. Most of all, you must be vulnerable. Vulnerabili...

  Opportunity cost Every decision has an outcome. The outcome of that decision can either be good or bad. The biggest challenge is choosing which decision to make based on the projected outcome. At this time in my life, I have been challenged to make many crucial, life-changing decisions. When making these decisions, I weigh the number of positive outcomes versus the number of negative outcomes. Typically a decision will be made based on which decision leads to more positive outcomes. But at times, opportunity cost factors into the equation. What is opportunity cost? Opportunity cost is the feeling that you are missing out on an opportunity by not making a certain decision. Oftentimes the weight of the potential positive outcomes associated with this decision, can shadow the number of potential positive outcomes associated with its counter decision. You are unable to control every single thing that happens in your life, so you must choose to live in the moment. Go with your gut. So...

  Continuum To start you must have an idea of where you will finish. The hardest part of creating anything is continuing to do it. The initial rush of starting something is enough to motivate you to jump. Starting is a huge accomplishment, but how do you finish? You must create a clear, concise plan for achievement. A mental road map that tells you where to go is the only way you can actually get there. Starting gives off an initial adrenaline rush but when continuing to work, that rush fades. If you have a clear road map with pit stops and built-in rewards, the speed bumps are easier to get over. There will be days you don’t want to do anything, but the days that continuing to work are the hardest, you will find the most payoff.  Pushing through barriers generates motivation through the dopamine released by the feeling of self-achievement. When you push through something hard, and you know it was hard, it feels even more satisfying. It is much easier to push through if you ha...

  Success How can you measure success? There are many ways of measuring what success is, how successful something was and why it was successful. I believe that the degree of success of something can only be measured based on the standard of success. If standards are set low, the degree of success is a lot more manageable. But in return, it is less satisfying. If standards are set high, the degree of success is extremely difficult to reach, but more satisfying if reached. So how can you set the success standard? You must establish a threshold where the success feels fulfilling but also ignites motivation and more future success.  If one sets the success standard so high that the climb to the top is so exhilarating that the idea of doing more seems insane, the result is failure. But success is different in every person. Some may feel like a high success standard is manageable, and therefore they continue creating more success and achieve more than someone who sets a lower standa...

  Growing and Dying The crunch of a once vibrant green leaf signifies the entry to a new season. The season of shedding colors in such a beautiful death. Once a warm wind that carried seeds of new life has become a bitter, crisp breeze that sends chills through the bones. Daylight has diminished as the sun now looks upon us from a different point of view. Its rays have lost their warmth. Comfort is no longer provided by nature but rather a down-filled jacket that reeks of exploitation. Clouds that used to simply be passersby are now staples in the sky.  I walk through a picturesque landscape of elms and think back to when these colors meant something so much different. The streets I walk on are no longer on the way to school. Leaves on the ground no longer make up a pile of leaves that could amuse me for hours but rather amplify the stress that is to come. The first freeze was once a sign that a different adventure was arriving. Now all I can do is sigh and wish it was the way...