Live at the Edge

I’ve heard that if you think you have problems that you should find somebody with bigger ones.


Well I think this applies to having goals; if you think yours are big (or difficult or not realistic) then find somebody with bigger or more difficult goals.

I used to think I had it hard.  I was working 30 hours a week and had a busy ass life outside of my job.  I meditated, read, worked out and ate healthy nearly every day.  I felt like I was always on the go.

I felt like I never had enough time to work on things like my little side business I was trying to cultivate.  I was too busy with all my other commitments.


But really I could never focus my brain enough to put all my attention on it.  Really, the burning motivation was missing.


Well I traded my 30/hour job for a 50+ one and am beginning to see that the best way to kick yourself in the ass, to light a proverbial fire under it, is to challenge the fuck out of yourself.


Oh you can’t get X,Y and Z done only working 30 hours a week?  Trying working 50 hours and keeping all those old commitments.


You’ll figure it out.  I did somehow.


There are definitely growing pains and a lot of extended periods of discomfort but like a muscle tearing down under the duress of a weighted dumbbell, it only makes a person stronger.


So, the question is, was I being lazy before?


I’d say no.  I was sticking to a lot of different commitments to a certain degree.  However, it’s clear that I was far from maximizing my potential.


And the only thing that was going to push me to the limit was a new challenge that was outside my comfort zone.  Working fifty hours every week is fucking tough.  Mad respect to everybody who runs that grind.


They say if you really want to be a badass motherfucker that you have to live at the edge of your comfort zone.


Not living at the edge means complacency.  Sure, you know the ins and outs of your job or relationship or whatever, but your soul is slowly being sucked out of you.


Your brain relaxes because it can, because you can be comfortable and it has most of its needs met.

And like a muscle that doesn’t get used, your work ethic, your focus, your drive, it all atrophies to the point where you suddenly can’t seem to follow through on any commitments with yourself.


Living on the edge on the other hand, it keeps you mentally sharp.  It’s usually somewhat scary so it keeps you at attention.  Your brain has to use more energy to function because it has to navigate through uncharted territory.


I remember this most vividly living in France and learning the language.  Because I wanted to learn the language so badly I would listen to anything, every conversation, every word, just so that I could move a little bit closer to understanding .00001% more than did the previous day.  My brain felt fried at the end of every day because I was cramming it full of so much.  It was an exhilarating feeling.


In the natural world, there is no such thing as the idea of “staying the same”.  Everything is either growing or dying.  And so is true with the development of ourselves.


You can make the choice to continue to challenge yourself and play as close to the edge of your comfort as possible.  If you choose to live in the world of comfort and complacency, then you make the choice to atrophy something.

But it is always a choice.  And if you don’t make the choice, the choice will be made for you.

Being "The Decider"

Lately I've been completely fascinated with people who get stuff done.

Specifically, I' referring to the CEO-enterpreneur-manager personality type who has to make a bunch of decisions on a daily basis and follows through on getting shit done.

hahahahahaha

Maybe it's because it's qualities I deeply lack.

It has become painfully obvious that I get lost in decision making. It leads to a lot of wasted time. I try to think through every decision of the day. What will be my most efficient use of time? “Let's sit down and think it through” is the justification.

But while I'm thinking, I'm usual doing nothing. Meanwhile, the CEO-entrepreneurial type made the decision long ago and has made many more since.

“Thoughtful” decision-making often means lack of decision-making. At least for me. And I know this holds true for others as well.

Every decision cannot be a life or death thing. We can't research everything through to the end. It's the perfectionist tendency that convinces us otherwise.

Many of the days choices are massively trivial. Most of the time it's more efficient go with the best option you have at the moment and to accept that everything will not be done perfectly.

It's a really bitter pill to swallow. I hate not doing a perfect job. It stabs at my insides to clean my room and see that more can be done. But there is simply not enough time in the day to clean my room perfectly and write out a perfect blog post and read every book I want to read.

I cannot tell you how much I hate thinking about letting mediocrity in my life but it's a necessary evil. I simply don't get enough important stuff done on a daily basis.

I've been lucky enough to meet some pretty ambitious people in my life who embody the qualities of that hard-nosed decision-maker and my eyes were opened to what that really is.

Instead of seeing someone who haphazardly decides on the day's agenda, I see people who, through massive amounts of experience making on both terrible and great decisions, are able to grasp the art of efficiency.

At the end of the day, this might be the holy grail to being a rockstar at what you do. We'll see.

"We Are All Connected"

Long ago, somewhere in our galaxy, a star somewhat similar to that of our sun destroyed itself in a massive and brilliant explosion known as a supernova.

Image of Cassiopeia A, a supernova "remnant"

After billions of years of burning brightly, that star's hydrogen fuel ran out and the core of the star could not sustain it's own gravity any longer. It collapsed in on itself at an incredibly high velocity and subsequently blasted off the outer layers in a magnificent release of energy.

These outer layers contained heavier elements which had been forged through the life of the star. These heavier elements are noteworthy because if you look around you right now, whether it be at your hand, a pet or the floor beneath you, you are surrounded by them. All the elements that make life possible derive from stars.

“We are all made of star stuff” the comsologist Carl Sagan once said. Pretty cool, eh?

All humans, all animals, all plants and even the chunk of rock we call Earth, share the same atomic mother and in that vein we are deeply related. This isn't clear just looking around us. If anything, it seems that you and I are different. And my cat is not me.

As different as we seem to be on the surface, whether it be by gender, race, opinions or even species, the atoms in our bodies come from the same place.

Cheesy and overplayed as it may sound, we are all connected.

LIVING IN DISCONNECTION

On a day to day basis, I think we all feel disconnected from the world we live in. Even with people all around us, whether it be family or a large city, we can still feel as if we are separated by something.

The mind will divide others in to categories and groups that make reality easier to understand and predict. My cat is a separate species of animal according to my mind-made category, thus we are not the same.

This low-level thinking is important and necessary to understand the world around us. But how often do we even contemplate the connectedness of ourselves to this world?

It's not woo-woo spiritual stuff we're talking about here. This is scientific fact. Now that we can prove that everyone is relatively the same, made up of different combinations of molecules and atoms, it is easier to take a step back and look at what that really means.

AN EXERCISE IN “TAKING A STEP BACK”

Take a moment and imagine how big the earth is compared to ourselves. Pretty hard to imagine how massive the earth is at roughly 8,000 miles in diameter and a mass of 6x1024 kilograms. It's quite a bit larger than you or I.

Now take our huge earth and compare it to the sun. Glance at the picture on below for scale. The sun is roughly 1.3 million times the volume of earth. Pretty massive.

Now think of how close our sun is to our closest neighboring sun, Proxima Centauri, which is roughly 4.2 light years away. If I could travel there, at the speed of light (186,000/miles per second), it would take me 4 years. Our closest neighbor is far away.

Then think of how long it would take to travel to the center of our galaxy (about 27,000 years), to cross our entire galaxy (about 100,000 years), to the closest neighboring galaxy (2.5 millions years), to go beyond our “supercluster” of galaxies (estimated at 100 million years) and then to the edge of the known universe (guesses range at 46-47 billion years).

How big are we in comparison?

We are an inconceivable speck, riding around on another inconceivable speck, circling another speck, amongst billions of other specks, surrounded by billions of other specks clustered together.

This simple exercise is not reason to feel bad or insignificant. Quite the opposite actually. It's a refresher that we are 6 billion (or is it 7 now?) individuals running around on this little blue dot, all on the same little boat.

For better or worse, we are stuck with each other here on Earth. We, who were all created in the belly of a star, feel the same feelings, share the same pain and live in similar conditions. No matter how badly the urge is to feel that we are deeply divided amongst any religion, race, country, culture or opinions, we can't escape that we are deeply connected to eachother.

I know I know, this is about as cheesy as it gets for me. “Feel connected” and “See the best in others” isn't really an original thought. It's super new-agey and somewhat vague. Guilty as charged.

However, I can't think of a more fulfilling feeling, of a more rejuvenating energy, that derives itself from the feelings of a universal link.