The Exploration

  Default action We are slaves to the habits we create. Habits that we create become unconscious actions and take more energy to not do than to do. Falling back on actions that are comfortable for you can either be healthy or unhealthy. It is for you to decide what your default action is.  It is so easy to say you want to grow. But you cannot grow unless you change. You must be willing to change things if you want to see any growth. If your default action is to snack when you’re bored, you will unconsciously snack and continue to gain weight. If your default action is to play video games every single time you are in the same room as your game system, you will play video games unconsciously. It is easier for the brain to do things that it is used to because it takes much less energy. The question to ask yourself is do you want it to be easy, or do you want to grow? Growing certainly is not easy. You must dedicate yourself to growth. You must turn those unconscious decisions in...

  Feeling Stuck Monotony has taken over. Hours that once felt like minutes have regained their true form and seem to drag on and on. Ambition has been lost and growth has come to a stand still. I am stuck. A variety of things can cause the feeling of being stuck. But usually it stems from feeling off with your current situation. This calls for a change. You need to make a change to something in your life when you feel this way, or else the feeling will never change. To release pain, you need to feel pain. You are hurting because there is something in your life that is causing it. It will be painful to change this thing but it must happen if you are going to relieve the pain. The pain will end if you make it end. ~Thank you for reading. My goal is to help teach others ways to better themselves while doing the same for myself. This is The Exploration.~

  Gratitude “I have nothing to be grateful for. I have done it all on my own.” This is the immature mindset of my younger self. I thought I had been destined to have the life I had. I thought everything was unchangeable. I thought every accomplishment was my own. I took credit for everything good and blamed everyone else for anything bad. I wasn’t happy. I thought praising myself for my accomplishments was healthy. I couldn’t figure out what was wrong with my life. The issue: I blamed everyone for the bad and only credited myself for the good. Years went by and I finally began to think of everyone that makes me who I am. Every person that is in my life has made some sort of impact. The people surrounding you make up so much of who you are. Yes, you have the most impact on your own life, but those around you mold you more than you could imagine.  So I started thanking others. I started remembering the people who helped me when I was down, the people who assisted me to get where...

  Delay Gratification As humans, we do things that give us a positive reaction upon our actions. This is called instant gratification. We like to see a positive result instantly after doing something good. We want to see 6-pack abs after 30 minutes on the treadmill. We want to buy a new car after getting one paycheck. But as we all know, this isn’t sustainable. That’s where delayed gratification comes in. People who are able to prolong the feeling of satisfaction usually find a bigger reward at the end. Consistently showing up to the gym day after day even when you don’t want to and eating healthy most of the time will give you 6-pack abs. Consistently saving a portion of your paycheck that will go toward a new car will allow you to afford the car of your dreams. It is all about consistency, time, and repetitions.  Constructive habits that are consistent will show more progress over time than spurts of good habits and mounds of bad ones. That dream life that you hope to have c...

  Motion Learning, dreaming, and imagining are all important aspects of becoming successful. But they are simply the preparation stage. It is not possible to actually realize success if you are always in the preparation stage. That is why doing is crucial to success. When you learn, or dream, or imagine, let it lead to your next action. Use these preliminary actions to spark your main action. Put your dreams into motion. A brain full of knowledge is worthless when you don’t take any action. Simply doing will help you learn along the way.  The fear of failure is common in every human being. We hate uncertainty. We want to know that everything will turn out. Because of this, we are less likely to start something unless we are sure we will succeed. But without a start, there is never an end. You must start to finish. Starting is the first step to finishing. If you never take the first action, there will never be any results. I encourage you to prepare, practice, and then learn....

  Tree of life Every life has a purpose. Therefore, every action should have a purpose. Are we truly alive if we live without purpose? I believe the answer is no. We are creatures motivated by needs and wants. There are deep, physiological needs that live within us that influence us to do what we do each day. One of those physiological needs is purpose. If possible, put your overall purpose into one sentence, essentially your mission statement. The mission statement or purpose are the roots that keep you upright. Your mission statement should not be something that you can do overnight, it should not be something that can be accomplished in your lifetime either. A mission statement should be the legacy you leave. In your last moments, you should look back and say that you have accomplished what you wanted to accomplish in life. This overall purpose lives with you through your entire life and you know when you are close to it and when you stray from it.  Once you have establishe...

  Spending money with a frugal mind I hate spending money. When I think about going to do an activity, my mind goes to spending the least amount of money possible. I try to avoid breaking the bank. I have started to ask myself why I do this? Frugality has been programmed in me. I have a hard time going outside of my means. But what I have realized is that it is important to spend money and just enjoy yourself sometimes. Today I want to talk about how I go about spending money on special occasions as a frugal person. First off, I create a budget on how much money I want to allocate for specific activities each month. I start off with the things I need each month then move down to what I want. I think about what is most important to me and work down from there. Basically when I have ranked needs and wants based on their importance, I establish a monetary value for each one. I take a percentage of what I make each month and put that toward each category. My budget for activities often...

  Find the good A negative mindset destroys the chances of seeing the good in anything. It never allows you to truly appreciate anything for what it is. The lens I used to see things through was always negative. I blamed my situation for making my life worse. I never took responsibility for my own life and allowed every small hiccup to bother me. I was a negative person. One day, I decided to look for the good in every situation. Before becoming stressed and anxious about things I couldn’t control, I decided it would be best to take a deep breath. Looking deeper into any situation completely diminishes the anxiety I used to feel. I now look at things on a bigger scale. I ask myself, “how does this affect the overall trajectory of my life?” Usually it is not much at all. The things that we let get a hold of us typically only throw a fork in the road for hours, days, and maybe weeks. In the big picture, it is such a small, minute part of our lives that should not become so exaggerate...

  Get back on track There is nothing worse you can do for your progress than get off track and be upset at yourself about it. Times will come that you will lose your way. But rather than making no progress for the days after because you are upset you lost your ground, get right back on track. One bad day used to throw off my entire week. I used to let a break in a streak ruin my habits for the upcoming days. I would give in to a bad habit and continue to give in again and again because I had already given in once. I knew I had to find a way to stop going backward and start going forward again.  Now, I have a plan to get back on track. Here are a couple things that I do to start making progress again when I break off. First of all, rather than thinking back to what went wrong, recognize it, think about why it wasn’t good, and get over it. You might have screwed up, but thinking about the mistakes you made, think of how you can come back from it. It’s not about how hard you fall...

  Care Smiles spread happiness. Happiness creates positivity, productivity, and creativity. These create success. So now, let’s backtrack. How do you create a smile? Care. Make others feel good. Show them you care and their hearts will smile. If I could see through the lenses of the people around me, I would like to be able to say that I am proud. The reality is, I most likely cannot be. Every single person feels different emotions in different situations. My goal is to make others feel the best they can when I am around. I strive to put others' emotions at the top of my mind and use that to influence my actions.  It is impossible to make everyone happy. It is. But, can you avoid making them unhappy? That might just be possible. Obviously nobody ever feels the exact same way as you, but controlling your being has a direct impact on those in your presence. Work to become aware of how you make others feel, and in return, you will feel better about yourself. Emotional awareness i...

  Become indispensable One of the most important lessons I have learned in my life is the more value you add to yourself, the more others want you. Today I am going to talk about being the person that people cannot live without.  First off, I want you to ask yourself “what makes other people attractive?” Why might you want to be around someone more than another? Typically it is because they possess qualities that are A.) attractive/likable B.)unique/exclusive to them C.)necessary/vital for you.  Now, think about yourself? Do you have any of these things? How many do you have? What sets you apart? I want you to focus on these questions when learning anything new. How can I separate myself from the pack based on the information I know, the skills I possess, and the persona I give off.  Once you have answered these questions, start building yourself into that indispensable superhuman. Learn all the information you can. Develop the skills that not many have. Become the p...

  Limiting regret Do you ever look back and think “I wish I would’ve done that differently”? That is the feeling of regret that we all experience. This feeling stems from not giving everything we had in the moment. Now, let’s figure out how to avoid regret. First of all, be present in the moment. Half the time we feel regret is because in the moment we regret, we were basking in some other moment that had already happened. We worry about the past and the future rather than being in the present. Too much fixation with both the past or the future will lead to missing what is right in front of you. Next, focus when you are doing something. Complete focus in one activity allows us to give all of our attention and effort to that one thing. If you are attempting to multitask, your brain will not be able to give 100% effort to that one thing causing you to look back and regret not giving 100%. Prioritize. Make your top priorities the root of your effort and focus. By prioritizing, we limi...

  Constantly create By far one of the best activities for maintaining your mental strength is to constantly create. Whatever it is that you create, it will stimulate and challenge the mind. Your creativity keeps your mind fresh, it keeps you present. You must realize that when you create, you are doing it for you. You are the main benefit of all your creations. The benefits of creating are not only felt by your mind, but also felt by your emotions. Creation gives you self-respect and the feeling of accomplishment and achievement. Creation is a way for yourself to convince yourself that you are capable. It also allows you to dump any emotion you are feeling into your creation. Your creation is completely yours. It is something that you control. There are no bounds in creativity. Challenge yourself to create something everyday. Something small, something big, it could be whatever. Let your mind wander and feel everything it wants to feel. Free your mind from the constant restrictions...

Show up everyday About four summers ago I worked a job that required me to work up to sixteen hours a day, typically it was around twelve. Nonetheless, this is more than half of my day that was consumed by work. A task where I didn’t have the freedom to do whatever I wanted, but it did give me freedom to discover more of myself. I realized that I had to make time. The lack of free time caused me to optimize the free time I had. I quickly found out that if I was going to still improve myself while working all of these hours, I just needed to show up everyday. I needed to make time for what I found most important, no matter what the situation was. Believe it or not, I found myself to be even more creative and willing to work on my passion after a long day of work. I felt free. I was still excited to get home at midnight because I knew I would be able to create, sleep and workout before work the next morning. Squeezing every little bit I could out of my free time also made me feel extreme...

Choose your friends The one thing I have realized that has hit me like a ton of bricks over the years, is that people can leave your life just as fast as they appeared one day. When you feel like you have lost time with somebody, it hurts. What also hurts is the feeling that you wasted time on somebody that was not worth the time. So how do we figure out who to spend time on? I will dive into a couple of aspects to look for in good friends. The first thing I look for in any relationship is somebody who shares the same goals as me. If we share the same goals for ourselves, we are able to build each other up and work together to become the best versions of ourselves.  You don’t necessarily need to sit down and have the goals talk with everyone you meet though. A simple way of recognizing if someone has the same goals as you, is by watching how they live. If you have a friend who is always spending their money carelessly on random things, you might recognize that you don’t have the sa...

  Days of rest pt 2 Overwork is not effective. Pushing your body to the absolute max is necessary at times to see the most growth, but we need a time afterward of recovery and reflection. Before, I talked about how pushing yourself to the limit will create a new limit when you take time to rest. Today, I will talk about how rest allows you to become more motivated when you have recovered. First off, what is the purpose of rest? I used to be a firm believer that if I took a rest day, all of the progress I had made to get there would be erased. Now, I look at a rest day as a scenic overlook on the way to the summit. It allows you to recover, reflect, and remotivate yourself. How do we know when to rest? For me, it has become more and more apparent when I need time off. Lack of motivation, lack of creativity, and lack of information retention are the three things that show me I need rest. So let’s break down the signs of each one. We have all lacked motivation at some point. It is som...

  Habits Habits are the building blocks of who we are. We are a product of our habits. Every single action you take has an impact on your overall being. Knowing this, how do we create the right habits? The book Atomic Habits explains this to perfection in Chapter 2 titled How Your Habits Shape Your Identity (and Vice Versa). I will do my best job of summarizing the main takeaways in this chapter.  There are essentially two different ways that habits are formed: habits formed based on an outcome, and habits formed based on an identity. So what is what? Typically, we form habits because we want to A. accomplish something, or B. become a better version of ourselves. The first is an outcome-based habit and the second is an identity-based habit.  First, let’s talk outcome-based habits. These habits are formed from the desire to accomplish something. We want to get something done so we create systems of doing that and that changes our identity. If you want to write a book, you...

  Plans will change Being a routine oriented person does have its fallbacks. You create a fail-proof routine that will help you accomplish your goals. You map out every single hour or everyday and you are excited to begin each day. Then BOOM. Something pops up that completely reroutes your entire day. What do you do now? There are two options in this scenario. There is the option of being pissed off for the remainder of the day and completely falling off from what you planned on doing. Or, you can focus all of your time on the more urgent task at hand, handle it, and get back on course. Things like this happen every single day. Not everything is going to go as planned, but you must plan for the unplanned. The more flexible to changes you are, the better you will follow your routine in the long run. It is much easier to get back on the road if you treat the road bump as the bump that it is, rather than a gorge you cannot cross.  Too many times I have let one small change of pla...

  An indescribable feeling Raindrops fall on to my windshield and stream to the side as the wind blows. Not a single ray of sun is shown on this autumn morning. The sky is a dark hue of blue-gray, a color so familiar for this time of year. As I perceive this moment, I am transported back to years ago. Now, I no longer drive the streets of the upper midwest, but rather the northeast. The buildings have become early 1800s colonial-style pieces of art. The prairies have converted into miles of open ocean. The atmosphere has remained the same, but the landscape has changed. All of the sudden, I feel free. I have escaped from my daily routine and traveled back in time to a place where my skin is bright and my mind is pure. I snap back into consciousness as I drive. This moment felt all too real. For a second, I was not here. I was not present at all, and I felt free. I escaped.  Unknowingly, I have discovered a place to go whenever I want: my mind. Because of the similarities in en...

  Savor every moment I want you to imagine where you were a year ago today. Imagine what you looked like, how your day was constructed, what your outlook on life was, what your habits were. Now where are you today? Are you better? Have you accomplished more? If you are like me and most others, you are in a better spot today, you have improved. You might look back and think that you wish you were still in that moment, but you must realize that moment got you to where you are now, and if you went back, you would be erasing a year of progress.  We make progress whether we think we do or not. We continue to learn everyday, even if part of the learning is painful. You may be in a shitty situation right now and look forward to the day where it is all over. What you must realize is that the moment you are in now, is going to make that moment that much better. You must appreciate where you are now, to appreciate where you are later. We only have so much time. The mind is constantly lo...

  It just doesn’t matter As humans, we tend to get wrapped up in a lot of business that isn’t our own. We are stimulated by the bad news that is transmitted through media outlets day after day. We buy into what others tell us rather than what we think for ourselves. What we need to realize is that it just doesn’t matter. Why do we continue to concern ourselves with things we cannot change? Caring when you shouldn’t just creates unneeded stress in our worlds. Years of added stress will steal that time in the moment, as well as steal time off the end of your life. Focus on what you can control. To combat the information overload that the world has the ability to give us, I focus on simply using media for education, not for consumption. I attempt to separate myself from any news outlet because I can feel negativity stirring in me as soon as I see anything. We are fed bad news because it gets our attention. Tragedy, fear, and dismay all attract the human brain. It is interesting for us...

See stress as a challenge Our daily goals are often bogged by added stress. We develop a formulated plan to become successful that we allow to be derailed by a small amount of stress. We allow our routines to be broken by a little bump in the road. How can we combat this unavoidable piece of life? The answer: we cannot avoid it, but we can transform it.  We must see stress through a different lens, we must see stress as a challenge. The things that bring us stress provide so much relief when they have been solved. The feeling of overcoming a challenge gives us a huge feeling of accomplishment. Overcoming stress should do the same. We love the feeling after running a race, or completing a long shift at work. If we convince ourselves that overcoming stress will give us the same feeling, why don’t we welcome it? The goal is to start looking at what comes after the stress. We must realize that things will get better. The stress we experience leads to bigger, better things. See stress a...