Resistance affects all creative calling or pursuit. Whether you’re a creative, or you’re launching an entrepreneurial venture, starting a new health regimen, any pursuit of education, change in mindset, when helping others, any matters of the heart, being brave, and more.
It’s an invisible, insidious force that prevents us from doing our work. It’s fueled by fear.
Use resistance as a teacher. Let it guide you to identify what holds you back from pursuing your art/endeavor.
The enemy is a very good teacher
Dalai Lama
Imposter Syndrome and Isolation:
Feeling like an imposter signifies genuine creation. People that don’t question whether they’re enough or feel like they’re enough aren’t truly creating something worthwhile! This part hit me like a ton of bricks.
Remember that you’re never alone in your creative journey.
When you’re creating, you’re never alone because your art is with you. Imagine those you’re serving with the art you’re creating – let this field you.
The Mindset of a Professional:
Don’t talk about your art excessively, focus on creating.
The sinister thing about excuses – they’re actually valid. Push through your excuses and finish your art.
Build the habit of putting in the work. Mistakes happen, push through.
Professionals commit to their craft full-time. Amateurs don’t. Professionals show up, they master technique, and expose themselves to both good and bad judgement from the world. Professionals push through despite fear.
You have the right to work, but for the work’s sake only. You have no right to the fruits of work. Desire for the fruits of work must never be your motive in working.
Bhagavad Vita
Embracing the Work:
Resistance, not external factors, is the true enemy.
Work for the sake of the work itself, not for the potential fruits of your labor.
Cultivate a professional mindset and treat yourself as a corporation.
Don’t talk about your art, unless you’re sharing it to help others in their own creations.
Develop a routine to put in the work. Don’t let mistakes stop you. The purpose of routine is to get over resistance and build your effort muscle.
This was a great little read with some powerful lessons. If you haven’t yet, follow up on this book with two books titled Linchpin by Seth Godin, and Steal like an Artist by Austin Kleon.
Your own self-concept is much more important than worrying about what others think.
It’s time to get out of your own way.
Patterns in your life reflect your own behaviors.
Emotional Mastery and Personal Growth:
Mindlessly scrolling on social media is a coping mechanism to avoid discomfort.
Master your life by mastering your feelings.
Confirmation bias can be rewired to change your perspective.
All change, no matter how good, is wholly and completely uncomfortable.
Breakthroughs happen through micro shifts and consistency.
.01% changes every day lead to significant transformations.
Adversity fosters creativity.
Releasing the past and grieving are processes that require feeling and letting go.
Self-Acceptance and Authenticity:
You’re stuck with you. You can’t leave yourself even if you leave a place or situation.
Your mind can get stuck in the past, like a loop when you don’t deal with how those experiences impacted you.
Others are more focused on themselves than on judging you.
Seek approval from yourself, not others.
Connect with your inner child and listen before rushing in to help.
Habits, Purpose, and Happiness:
Be okay with being disliked and anticipate it while taking action.
Inner work is essential for personal growth and understanding triggers.
Validate your feelings to become stronger and support others.
Problems aren’t solved by positive thinking alone.
Principles shift from short-term survival to long-term success.
Habits have a compounding effect over time.
Discover your purpose and what you’re willing to work and suffer for.
Recognize emotions and choose how to respond to them.
Sit with discomfort and allow yourself to feel without forcing happiness.
True happiness comes from small joys, gratitude, and meaningful relationships.
Life requires growth and finding joy in simple and transformative experiences.
Schedule time for play and avoid overbooking yourself.
Meditation examples:
Meditate in a quiet peaceful area & invite your highest future self to sit down with you. Imagine what they say to you, how they feel, what they look like, how they behave, what their facial expressions communicate. Don’t go in with a laundry list of things to ask them, just be open and ask for their powerful guidance. The point is to merge yourself with your future self. Listen to their message, it should be uplifting, affirming and helpful, not negative.
Imagine your current self talking to a past self 3,5,7 years ago. Should be recent enough that you can relate to this person but far enough that you’ve changed. Imagine sitting down in a place you used to go to a lot or live in, then imagine you’re giving your past self pieces of your current life and all the information they need to go from that person to the person you are now. You can hand them car keys, email, bank account information, an outfit, instructions on what to do for your career, day to day habits, etc.
Close your eyes and re-enter a memory. Really feel the experience & find the feeling in your body where you become uncomfortable. Follow the feeling and ask it show you where it started from. Then superimpose a new narrative to your younger self who experienced this memory in order to start the process of letting go. Imagine that you (a wiser older self) is imparting some wisdom to your younger self. Give the specific instructions why that this is absolutely for the best and although they can’t know it yet, there is another experience that is far far better in store for them. Who does this younger self need to call, what do they need to begin doing, and what they need to stop doing? Impart that wisdom to your younger self. Imagine telling yourself that everything is going to be ok. Their fears are largely unfounded and good things are coming, and life will turn out good in the end. You can’t change what happened in the past, by shifting your perspective you can change how you arrive now. You can change the story, and you can change your life.
I’ve been in a reading slump lately so when I went to the library a few weeks ago I picked up several small novels >200 pages. I’ve found that reading smaller books when I’m not feelin’ it gives me an incredible sense of accomplishment. It’s akin to putting gym clothes & shoes on, going to the gym and working out for 2 minutes. Sometimes showing up is half the battle.
I had never heard of the author or the book. The Greatest Salesman in the World by OG Mandino. I really wasn’t expecting much because the cover looks kind of gimmicky but I’m so glad I didn’t judge it. It was truly a gem! I’ve been in the personal development world since my daughter Amani was born, which means I’ve read a lot of books, watched a ton of mindset/growth YT videos & listened to endless podcasts on this topic – just totally and fully immersed myself in the world. My intention was to be a good role model for my daughter.
After a while, I realized a lot of these books contain similar themes, just written in a different way or with a slight tweak. The reason I liked Greatest Salesman is because it takes what everything you’ve probably learned and heard throughout your life and intertwined these important life lessons in a really simple, Aesop’s Fables type of story in less than 110 pages.
The following principles were highlighted in the story:
Start today. Form good habits and cultivate the discipline to stick to those habits. Have a leaner’s mindset with discipline as the foundation. Once the foundation is set, dive deep and repeat.
Embody love. Be love, share love. Embrace the day with love. End the night with love.
Be persistent. Keep going until you succeed.
You are a miracle & there’s no one in the universe exactly like you. You’re gifted with a powerful mind, special skills, and certain physical and mental abilities. This means your potential is unlimited.
Use time wisely. Focus on what matters. Work hard, cherish relationships, be present and express gratitude. Time is something you can’t ever get back.
Don’t let emotions dictate your life. Emotions aren’t facts and they aren’t truth. Master them.
Remember, this too shall pass. Be the light, smile and laugh often.
You’re in control of you, this is powerful. You’re in control of your emotions, your work ethic, how you show up in the world, how you cultivate relationships, what you spend time on. You’re in control of that and so much more.
Actions cure all. Anyone can come up with an idea. Anyone can create a plan. Anyone can set goals. None of that is worthwhile or matters unless you make the first move. Start today, start now.
Don’t be afraid to ask for help.
Some really great quotes that I found striking are below:
True wealth is of the heart, not of the purse.
Whatever aid I give thee will be as a grain of sand compared to the mountains you must move for yourself.
The rewards are great if one succeeds, but the rewards are great only because so few succeed.
Never feel shame for trying and failing because he who has never failed has never tried.
Failure will never overtake me if my determination to succeed is strong enough.
As I repeat these words daily, they will soon become a part of my active mind but more important, they will also seep into my other mind, that mysterious source which never sleeps, which creates my dreams, and often makes me act in ways I do not comprehend.
I will consider each days effort as but one blow of my blade against a mighty oak. The first blow may not cause a tremor in the wood, nor the second, nor the third. Each blow, itself, may be trifling, and seem of no consequence. yet from childish swipes the oak will eventually tumble. So it will be with my efforts of today.
Never will I be of concern that my goals are too high for is it not better to aim spear at the moon and strike only an eagle than to aim my spear at the eagle and strike only a rock?
This was a very worthwhile read! I loved the story and found that it helped me remember the wisdom of the lessons much more easily. Also that was very concise and really did its job – rekindled my love of reading and inspired me to reach for another book.
We moved around a lot when I was younger, never spending more than 1-2 years in one place. This made it really hard for me to make and keep friends so I always felt like an outsider. My home environment was inconsistent and tumultuous. This recipe was a catalyst to entrepreneurship. Both the seedling and soil.
What remained constant was the library, and the incredible stories and new worlds contained in the books.
I remember the first few books that enchanted both my mind and soul as a young child.
My dad would take me to the library every week. As soon as we got there I would make a beeline to the children’s’ section and grab as many individually packaged bags that I could – bags that contained a singular picture book and it’s companion audio cassette tape. When we came home I would run to my mini radio boombox and insert the first tape. The sound of the voice narrating Cat in the Hat wafted into the living room and into my ears and my heart. Dramatic – absolutely, but it was love at first sound.
Love at first story, my little heart pitter pattered, just wholly reveling the remarkable words strung together. Words into sentences, snapped together perfectly like legos building a magical, fantastical story in my head.
I learned English this way.
I would listen over and over, enunciating along, rewinding, stopping, eyes bright, finger tracing the jagged black outlines of the wild and beautiful green ham.
I think this is where it began.
The library and books. The art, and stories.
They helped shape me.
They helped me break rules, to learn, listen before I spoke, to create, to be strange, to not settle. They cultivated in me a desire for something different. To crave a better, bolder world. They were an escape. A dialogue between myself and my soul, between me and the author.
A story, my story – a path, an imperfect trail. Onward.
I read quite a bit last year. I made some graphs because I like nerd shit. I read a variety of books, I reread some books because I thought they were important and they were short and sweet and it helped me reach my 52 book goal. I read comics, essays and fiction. I read nonfiction, I listened to audiobooks. I read books about zombie babies murdering neighbors. I read a book Da Terminator wrote about his Terminator life and there were actual nuggets of wisdom that I deeply appreciated.
I read the last book one of the greatest scientists of our time wrote. I read books that made me cry. Books that made me pull over and replay the last 30 seconds because that stanza was just so damn beautiful, so thought provoking and insanely and gorgeously and painfully written.
I read about how Starbucks began. I appreciated the hell out of the story.
I read a book about Elon Musk’s larger than life story, a heart wrenching story about a neurosurgeon’s fight with lung cancer. Books about the big bang theory, event horizons, and books that provided a hypothesis that disproved Gods existence – which really fucked me up, but in a good way. A book by Seth Godin about how to stand out, how to use your imagination and creating with love because that’s what differentiates us from machines in a cog – “Linchpin” was the book that inspired me to start this blog. And James Altucher’s “Choose Yourself” taught me to train my idea muscle on the daily – I’m all about that swole idea muscle life.
I reread Carol Dweck’s “Mindset.” Why? It’s a book so fucking important it should be read at least once every year. I also read 2 books that taught me about meditation and the power of being present, and lead me to download Headspace, an app that has positively affected my life. “You Are a Badass,” “The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck,” and “Rejection Proof” made me laugh out loud IRL, and the story of Elizabeth Holmes of Theranos in “Bad Blood” made me go WTF IS WRONG WITH PPL.
This chart shows how many books I read each month. I really picked up my reading when we moved out of our apartment. My commute became longer, from 30 minutes one way to almost an hour one way so I got through A LOT of audiobooks starting in the summer. Not only did my commute get longer, but I was also more awake and feeling much better after switching from night shift to day shift, which occurred sometime during March/April. Nightshift really killed any desire for me to read anything I had to actually digest and think about.I used Overdrive/Libby and Audible to get most of my audiobooks. Shoutout to Tom Bilyeu and the Impact Theory team, they really kicked off my love of audiobooks by sending me 3 months of audible credits because I was a was a 2nd place winner for a contest they were running. I used Audible when I REALLY REALLY wanted the book and when the wait times for the library was like 6 months or longer cause I have no patience. Audiobooks and kindle books are easy to carry around, thus more convenient. I’m prone to laziness so when things are super convenient, I don’t have an excuse and I’m more likely to read. I try to follow this rule in other areas of my life. If I meal prep I don’t have to make food throughout the week. If i pick out my clothes the night before I won’t be late and I can be lazier in the mornings. If I follow a workout program I don’t have an excuse to not go to the gym. If you’re a lazy POS like I am, make it super fucking easy on yourself you’ll be able to develop that habit.Nonfiction books are good for the brain, and fiction books are good for the soul. Fiction ignites a fire in your imagination. The majority of the books I read were nonfiction, but I didn’t just stick with personal development. I read true crime, medicine, science, biographies, and so on. Keep it spicy my dudes.I went out of my comfort zone last year. I didn’t sky dive or give a speech in front hundreds of people, nay, it was much more tame than that. I expanded the type of reading I did. It’s important to read classics, and most of the classics are written by old white bros. It’s a fact. I’m still gonna keep reading books written by old white dudes, but I want to expand my worldview and to do that I have to read stuff from authors of different demographics. For 2019 I’m going to continue this quest.
I read short books, essays, books with pictures, ebooks, I listened to books, I read books by brown people who look like me, read books by women, just like me. That felt good. Empowering. In October I was stressed the hell out wondering how I would get to my 52 book goal and I went into Overdrive (pun intended). I felt like I was back in college, with only one week left of finals, but like, in a more fun way, not the “Oh shit I’m gonna fail this fucking class if I don’t cram all this information inside my brain which I will immediately dump out soon as I finish my test” kind of way.
My favorite books of 2018 are David Goggins “Can’t Hurt Me,” “Between the World and Me” by Ta-Nehisi Coates, “The Giver” by Lois Lowry, “Daring Greatly” by Brene Brown, “Relentless” by Tim Grover, and “Ready Player One” by Ernest Cline. My goal for 2019 is to read 30 books and to even more books by authors from diverse backgrounds. My goal is lower this year because a higher priority for me in 2019 is to network and really cultivate deep meaningful relationships. I want to apply what I read instead of just consuming vast amounts of information, which often leads to inaction. Inaction is one of my greatest weaknesses. It’s easy to stay at home and read in my own little introverted bubble, life’s more comfortable that way. Ideas and people grow when we interact with others. Growth occurs when you put yourself in uncomfortable situations, and I’m trying to develop that David Goggins type of calloused mind 💪🏾🧠
I also read Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willink and Leif Babin.
How do I change the world? In order to change the world, I must first change myself. I can do this through action. Through routine, I obtain freedom. I will change my world. I network, read, create and share my art.
My art, my work, is a gift. I will give this gift freely, easily. My word, my vision, my empathy, my ideas, my soul.
Through routine, by nourishing my body, my mind and my spirit, I will slowly but surely obtain what I desire.
In order to create an impact with my art, I have to exercise extreme ownership in my craft, in my life, because by owning up, I exercise control over my own world. I am in control of my actions, I own my emotions and my feelings, I control me. It’s easy to blame others, it’s not easy taking blame. Nothing world while comes easy.
Welcome, to my front porch.
I sweep it, consistently. Every day my porch is cleaned, freed of dust through my controlled movements. I hold the broom and I create. My art develops as it’s shared, from my heart to yours
Mindset: The Psychology of Success by Carol Dweck (reread)
Choose Yourself by Dave Atulcher
Pet Sematary by Stephen King
Relentless By Tim Grover
And I’m halfway through The Personal MBA.
How do I do this?
I made these 3 small changes in my life.
Read more, watch less
I didn’t cancel my Netflix subscription and I’ll jump on Instagram/Facebook once in a while. These days though, I don’t have much time to dedicate to social media or binge watching the latest show on Netflix. Instead of cutting things out, which is negative reinforcement, I simply increased my reading time. I’ve cultivated my love and need for reading this way. I thrive on learning new things, exposing myself to new ideas, and being able to get through books so quickly. The more I read, the less time I have for other stuff.
Make it simple, make it special.
I make it easy to read. I listen to audiobooks when I’m doing chores, when I’m on the treadmill for 15-20 minutes before I lift, at the grocery store when the lines are long. I listen to audiobooks when I ride my bike. I carry my kindle or a book with my when I’m going somewhere. I get a minimum of 2 hours of reading on my workdays because my commute is so long.
I make reading special. I read with my kid. The time I read to her helps me bond with her. She’s awesome. We make jokes, do silly voices for characters, read books with pictures, books without pictures, classic books, audiobooks. It’s fun. Don’t have a kid? Read to your grandma, or fish.
I share what I learn from reading with my family and others. I highlight and write down quotes in my journal. I read reviews about books and try to understand what other people learned from that book and compare and contrast. I look up words I don’t know the meaning of. I read books from different genres and age groups. I read poetry and essays. I don’t let myself get bored with reading.
Listen fast, read fast
Listen to audiobooks at 1.5 speed and above. Start with 1.25, then up the speed when you get used to it.
Lastly, I invested in a program that helped me read faster. Athletes pay coaches insane amounts of money to become elite. Businesses pay consultants like, hella money yo to increase their profits and efficiency. I take reading seriously; if you do too, throw some money down on a legit company to help you read faster. If you don’t have money, look for free resources on Google or Youtube.
That’s it. Promise. It sounds easy because it really is.
Through routine, I obtain freedom. I will change my world. I network, read, create and share my art.