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Tag: create

24 ways to hit reset

1. Take a walk around the block.
2. Sit in the park.
3. Pick up a book you’ve been meaning to finish.
4. Play a favorite song.
5. Google photos of your next vacation spot.
6. Find a new route home.
7. Order take out.
8. Have lunch at a nearby hotel.
9. Surprise a friend.
10. Buy flowers.
11. Color with markers.
12. Set an alarm for a twenty minute nap.
13. Chug water.
14. Schedule a massage.
15. Follow an online yoga class.
16. Play with your dog (or your friend’s dog).
17. Don’t go into work — and don’t feel guilty about it.
18. Dance in your living room.
19. Wear something fancy.
20. Netflix.
21. Download a new podcast.
22. Reach out to an old friend.
23. Write a thank you note.
24. Plan a “staycation.”

Stay in the mud

We try to get out of uncomfortable moments fast — moments when we feel like frauds and failures and disappointments. But these moments are teachers, there to help you ask questions and sort through your most difficult, persisting views about yourself and the way the world works.

It’s tempting to race past boredom, to distract yourself from insecurities, to run from uncertainty.

Try to sit with those moments when you don’t know all the answers. Sit quietly and listen softly. The answers will come.

When you’ve been hurt

Your heart is broken. Maybe for the first time, maybe for the fifth. You have two choices now.

You can allow pain and anger to seep through your being and go about shielding yourself from any scenario that might cause these feelings again. This will undoubtedly result in limited encounters with the world, stifled relationships, and a blunted emotional experience.

OR

You can look for the lessons. You can dive into the pain and see if you can find greater understanding, more peace, more authenticity, and more focus than ever before. Instead of running, you can sit with the experience and breathe into it, knowing that eventually, slowly, it will pass. That in time small ripples of joy will wash healing currents through your life.

Past failures and disappointments only dictate your future if you let them. Seek out daily moments of magic and wonder. Flashes of lightening in a night sky. The impish smirk of a young child. The rustle of leaves at dusk. Kindness between strangers.

This is how you go on.

Top 10 posts from Project Exponential

1. 12 questions to turn small talk into real talk
2. 5 rules of hustling
3. What brings people together?
4. A coffee riddle
5. 10 questions to ask at a dinner party (instead of “What do you do?”)
6. The people in your life will make or break you
7. 19 things you can do instead of grad school
8. Stop trying to find your purpose
9. 7 sins of crowdfunding
10. Figure out what you want to learn and go do it

Working backwards, piece by piece

Vary rarely are goals — especially big ones — accomplished at once. Piece by piece, day by day, small actions lead up to the final result, the dream that inspired you from the beginning. This is why working backwards can help you get what you want.

Set your BIG goal and plan corresponding “mini-goals” that lead you to where you want to be. Often times the end goal can seem too far away and too discouraging to continue, but smaller, daily actions can keep your focus and intention in check.

Dream big, as big as you can, then identify the smaller steps you need to take to get there.

What does ease look like?

What does an “easy life” mean to you? What would you have time for? Do you see friends more often? Are you able to create, read, play? Do you eat differently, sleep better, take different care of your body? Are you more patient, relaxed, or kind?

Ease.

Dream about a life that feels like swimming through air. Meditate on it.

Then act.

Get rid of unnecessary stuff. Clean your house, clean your schedule, clean your body and mind. Slow down. Focus on one thing at a time (making lists can help with this). Wake up earlier and give yourself an extra twenty minutes to get to the office. Surround yourself with beauty: place freshly cut flowers on your desk, change your desktop photo, take morning walks, look up at the stars.

Inviting ease into your life opens the door to expansiveness, creativity, wonder, magic — and the unexpected. No, you won’t stop encountering difficult situations or irksome people, and your schedule won’t magically empty (you’ll have to do some work to clear out what is taking you away from your priorities). But you’ll start to move through life in a different way, and people will respond.

What does ease mean to you? Tweet me at @redheadlefthand.