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Tag: dreams

Your time directs your focus

The way in which you spend your time narrows your focus. What you think about, the choices you make, the schedule you follow — all of these daily decisions add up to who you are today.
Have you asked yourself who you’d like to be?
It is worth finding quiet space and taking time to answer this question honestly and searchingly. The answer might require some hard moves, perhaps major adjustments, but you owe it to yourself to ask: Is the path I am on the right one for me?
Your life depends on it, and the world benefits when you are your truest self.

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.

To fall in love, do this:

A few years ago, a NYTimes piece lured readers with the secret to relational bliss. The author detailed her personal experience based on psychological research claiming to make two strangers fall in love. By asking intimate questions and demanding two individuals spend quality time together — even holding each other’s gaze for four minutes — the pair were believed to cement a relationship.

Of course, relationships take time and care and persistent, almost stubborn commitment. But at the heart of two people choosing to share life and love is curiosity. Curiosity about your partner’s preferences and dreams. Questions that dare to journey beyond the superficial: goals and fears and heartache and hopes.

Not sure where to begin? These 36 questions can help you get started. Or listen to the original NYTimes piece on the Modern Love podcast.

5 years of connection, inspiration

Five years of dinners, thousands of connections and friendships formed.

Five years of strangers embracing risk and uncertainty. Questions asked and answered in dining rooms, wine bars, cheese bars, hidden nooks.

Five years of honest conversations and receptivity.

Romances, business partnerships, ideas, and improvements stemming from industry intersections and complementary interests.

Five years ago, when I first invited a group of eighteen entrepreneurs, academics, businessmen and women, writers and artists to a secret restaurant in New York, I asked them to embrace risk and curiosity and answer questions openly. Today, people around the world are sharing dinners, and invitations are extended to a select few to join special events in New York.

Thank you for sharing this journey. Here’s to more.

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.

What do you stand for?

How do you define yourself?
Who (and what) are you committed to?
When do you say No?
When (and how) have you failed?
Which decision would you remake?
Where do you spend most of your time?
Who (and what) do you love?
When was the last time you redefined yourself?
Are you afraid of change?