Tag Archives: Emotions

Social Contracts

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So we’re going through some upheaval now.

I’ve seen lots of polarized opinions about what’s been happening with respect to the protests and riots, but most of what I’ve seen doesn’t resonate with me. I find it difficult to subscribe to other people’s meanings in this area.

However, I found what Trevor Noah shared about this to be insightful. Normally he shares in a comedic style, but this video includes some deep and reflective commentary.

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I especially liked what he shared about social contracts.

A social contract includes many aspects, such as rules and laws, behavioral standards, expectations, values, and consequences.

I violated the social contract with the State of California quite a lot when I was younger, which led to being arrested multiple times. For a while I was okay with those consequences… until eventually I wasn’t.

I also violated the social contract with the religion that I grew up with, which led to abandoning that religion. It was a bad contract to begin with, so I was glad to terminate it.

Other times I violated aspects of social contracts more consciously, including those that expected me to get a job and to be monogamous. No regrets there.

But there is one social contract that I hold sacred, which is the contract I have with reality itself. A key aspect of this contract is that I always give reality the benefit of the doubt and don’t turn against it. Whatever reality dishes out, I do my best to accept it and roll with it.

This is a difficult one to uphold, but I find it essential for having a sane and functional life. It challenges me to keep seeking the personal meaning within any situation. It makes me ask repeatedly: How is what’s arising an invitation to grow?

I can’t answer that for other people. I can’t tell others what to think and feel and what the “correct” way to interpret current events are. The interpretation is personal. It’s your job to figure that out for yourself. If you look to others to answer this for you, you’ll be disappointed. Only your own answers can satisfy you.

I can share how I interpret the events in ways that enable me to honor my social contract with reality. Just don’t expect my meaning to be meaningful for you.

I see anger, violence, and upheaval, sparked in part by a violation of people’s values and expectations. I see the President hiding in his bunker and Tweeting his usual idiocy instead of leadership. I see Mark Zuckerberg’s own team members turning against him for his weak response. I don’t see the pathways emerging to create real solutions from the current situation, just escalating cycles of what we’ve already been through.

This makes me wonder what those pathways might be. I sense the pathways to growth and improvement will be in the direction of caring, empathy, and compassion. There is some of that in the current picture, but it seems more in the background and not in the foreground. So the personal meaning I see here is that caring needs to be moved into the foreground. The voice of caring is asking for fuller expression.

Caring is a big part of my work, but work itself can sometimes push the caring aspect out of the foreground of my life. So I’ve opted to give this voice of caring more space in my life this month.

Starting today, I’m doing a 30-day challenge to stop working by 4pm each weekday (other than 2 days when I have conflicting commitments that I’ll honor) and then devote 2 hours to exploring something that calls to my heart and feelings – something not directly work-related and with no expectation of being turned into a work product. Just let the heart lead, and follow it where it wants to go. Tune into what I care about, and engage with those parts of life more fully.

This time may include meditating to listen deeply to my emotions, practicing music, having meaningful conversations, acts of kindness, or anything else that feels like an exploration of what I care about. It’s not a head-based exploration, so I won’t map it out in advance. I’ll simply carve out the time and ask my heart what it wants to explore and experience each day for a couple of hours, and I’ll flow into action with whatever comes up.

I sense that if I want to express more caring outwardly, I need to get more in touch with it inwardly. So I want to build up my caring muscles and give them some extra exercise this month. Bring this part of life to the foreground, so it has more of a voice.

This feels aligned to me right now. While it may not look as edgy as yelling at people on social media or setting stuff on fire, it does feel edgy to me, and it feels like a good way to honor my social contract with reality. I know from experience that exploring the voice of caring isn’t a safe and predictable path. It’s a harder voice to listen to than many people realize.

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Misaligned Relationships, Rejection, Guilt, and Betrayal

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One of my readers recently asked: How do you stay connected to loved ones who aren’t on a journey of curiosity and growth?

I’ll frame this more generally by addressing these question too:

  • How do you maintain relationships with incompatible people who expect you to stay connected?
  • How do you manage shifting relationships while on a journey of growth?
  • How do you deal with feelings of guilt arising from letting go of incompatible people?

To answer the first question, my answer is pretty simple. I really don’t.

If they reach out to me, I’ll be civil with them, but I don’t see the point of investing in such relationships. I’ve tried to invest in such relationships in the past and concluded that this wasn’t going to work. The compatible isn’t there. The mutual support isn’t there. The flow of energy isn’t there. So why continue to invest?

Sometimes people don’t like what I’m into. Or they see my pursuits as threatening. Or they try to talk me out of new explorations. If it becomes clear that I don’t have their support for being who I am and living the life I want to live, it’s equally clear that I shouldn’t continue to invest in such connections.

That was disappointing at first. My initial response was to play it cool and be aloof, even though I still valued such relationships on some level. But that wasn’t sustainable. It leads to clinginess and neediness and a host of other problems as well. It’s harder to feel good emotionally and stay motivated and disciplined when you lower your social standards.

In the long run, I concluded that it was perfectly fine for me to want and need strong, compatible connections with other people. I just had to find the right people. I had to let go, let go, let go, of connections that were unfulfilling and dissatisfying.

There really are a lot of intelligent, heart-aligned, growth-oriented people in the world. But you may not see this abundance if you get clingy with mismatches.

The more I leaned away from misaligned connections and surrendered to the fact that they would never become what I really wanted them to be, the more I allowed myself to mourn the disappointment. I accepted the feeling of loss. I let hope die in those cases – because it was false hope.

I leaned into trusting my feelings and intuition, which told me that compatibility really matters.

In my 20s I had some limited experiences being around growth-oriented people, and it was refreshing. I felt like my spirit was being fed by a nurturing energy source that it sorely needed. Those were peak experiences, but I so wanted them to become everyday, normal experiences. At the time I didn’t even see how that was possible though.

Fast forward to today, and I connect with growth-oriented people every day as a normal part of life. I’m married to such a person too. But because I didn’t start with this, I can still relate to what it’s like to think of this as too good to be true.

Where are all the non-growth connections now? They’re pretty much dead because I haven’t invested in them for so long. I don’t feel any energy flowing through them. There are relatives that I haven’t seen, talked to, or emailed in many years, even decades, for instance. I let those connections fade.

I realize that in some cultures this would be seen as crazy, cruel, or anti-social, or a betrayal of family values. But I’m actually very pro-social. I like people. I just want to invest in relationships where the compatibility is high, the mutual support is strong, and the flow of energy feels intuitively right. The results are better for all involved.

Compassionate Rejection

When I think about incompatible relationships that I let go of over the years, I don’t feel much resentment or disappointment. I tend to feel more gratitude towards them than anything else. I see those relationships as valuable learning experiences. They helped me better understand what matters to me in life. They helped me clarify my values. They helped me define my social boundaries. So I find it difficult to feel much negativity towards them. I mostly feel appreciation when I think about them, if I feel anything at all.

I think that’s because I really like my life today. I like the people in my life. They’re interesting, creative, weird, fun, and deep.

I think many of us are a little too resistant to rejection. Sometimes rejections are done more harshly than necessary, but the general practice remains important. To reject means to dismiss or refuse. It means to say no. Some rejection is necessary to sculpt our characters. We must say no to the misaligned, so we can invite and embrace what does feel aligned. Otherwise we become blurry, ill-defined blobs instead of self-realized human beings.

I sometimes think of my social life as a journey. This involves movement and travel. I see relationships as fluid and flexible. They come and go. Some people move further away while others move closer. Some relationships will be short-lived. Others will endure longer.

In the long run, everyone grows. Some grow more consciously and deliberately, while others grow reactively in response to changing events and circumstances. The coronavirus situation is a growth experience for all of us. Some have woven this change into their journeys consciously. Others are mostly reacting to what arises. But we will all grow from this one way or another.

I have friends that are not super growth-oriented, definitely more reactive than proactive, and we get along okay most of the time. But I don’t usually invest much in such relationships. I prefer connecting with people who are on conscious journeys. It’s fine if they’re not clear about where they’re heading, as long as they embrace the overall idea of investing in learning and growth.

But the stubborn stick-in-the-mud types who have fixed mindsets? Where are they in my life today? Most days they just aren’t part of my reality. I have to stretch to even identify them. I don’t see them in person. I don’t see them on Zoom calls. I don’t see them in my email inbox. At best I might overhear a conversation out in public that strikes me as very limiting or ignorant, but then it fades away as I move past it.

I think I don’t attract such people into my life because I don’t invest energy in thinking about them most of the time. And if I do think about them, I mostly feel that gentle flow of appreciation, but it’s really just a trickle of energy. I don’t have spikey feelings in this area most of the time.

Social Norms

I also feel that investing in incompatible relationships is irrational. I don’t see the logic in pouring my energy into a connection that isn’t working, even if the other person wants to and even if social norms tell me I’m supposed to. My life has gotten better by rejecting social norms that didn’t work for me, so I tend not to give them much weight. The social norms I grew up with were full of irrational baggage that I discarded, like going to church every Sunday. Some social norms can have positive effects, such as by making communication easier and fostering good teamwork, but you always have to be cautious of them when it comes to expectations that push against rationality.

Being loyal to social mismatches is just more baggage to release. It doesn’t matter if they’re relatives or long-term friends. A mismatch is a mismatch.

I don’t think I could have a good life by elevating loyalty to social norms above my own mind, heart, and intuition. I trust my own thinking, my own feelings, and my own path with a heart way more than what society tells me or what relatives expect of me. My relatives can live their lives how they see fit, but I won’t invest in relationships that don’t feel aligned to me.

Guilt

When people conclude that I’m incompatible with them and want to move away from me, I let them go. I prefer not to chase after them and get whiny about it. I trust them to make their own decisions, and if they aren’t feeling the connection, who am I to question them about that?

Since I hold myself to this standard, I don’t feel guilty if someone else reacts negatively to my moving on. They can process those feelings how they see fit. I may feel some compassion for how their frames may be making a transition difficult for them, but I’m not going to wallow in their self-pity if they go that route. Otherwise I’d open myself up to emotional manipulation.

Other people don’t get to use their feelings to manipulate me. I will let them wallow in the pit of despair for as long as they want, but I won’t join them there.

I frame this as an issue of maintaining rational social investment standards, maintaining rational boundaries, and trusting my mind, heart, and intuition. I don’t give power to social norms. I don’t give power to other people’s reactions. And I don’t succumb to guilt because I’m doing what I feel is best.

I could feel guilty if I felt I violated my standards, especially in a way that caused someone harm. I can’t feel guilty for violating someone else’s standards – especially standards that I disagree with.

So if someone else holds that standard that I must behave in a way that feels misaligned to me in order for them to feel okay, that’s on them. They can expect that I will violate their standards to follow my path with a heart.

This happens, even with people I don’t know well. When I got into exploring open relationships, about 11 years ago, some of my blog readers felt betrayed. Some felt betrayed when Erin and I broke up. This year some felt betrayed when I shared my feelings about Trump. Some even felt betrayed when I stopped having Google Adsense ads on my site in 2008, calling me crazy for abandoning the business model they sought to emulate.

Do you think I felt guilty about any of this? Of course not. That’s because I was exploring and expressing what feels aligned to me. I could feel guilty if I violate my own standards, especially if I cause harm to someone else by doing so. But I can’t feel guilty if I honor my standards, even if someone else feels that I violated their expectations.

Betrayal

Now watch this: After trying out Instagram for a while, I’ve mostly stopped using it because I find it boring, stupid, and pointless. It’s just a dreadful match for me. Let’s see which avid IGers feel betrayed now…

For those who love Instagram, I’m happy for them. They should be free to post all the cat pics and yoga poses they want, with a proper handstand pic being the ultimate lifetime achievement. I love writing though, and IG is pure shit for that. It’s not a good platform for me at all. Does anyone really need to feel betrayed by my making a choice that’s right for me? Of course not, but some will anyway.

People are going to feel betrayed repeatedly if you live consciously and make your own choices. They’ll expect things of you that are unreasonable and irrational. They’ll have emotional reactions based on your decisions. I suggest that you let them. It’s not a problem per se unless you make it a problem. Just accept it as a normal part of life.

Do NOT under any circumstances let someone dig their emotional hooks into you and manipulate you emotionally. That will hold you back tremendously. In fact, this is one of the most problematic issues that many of my readers struggle with. They fall into the trap of turning against their own inner guidance and let someone else control them through emotional manipulation. Beware this trap – it’s nasty. It can suck years of your life away if you’re not careful.

Let people process their reactive feelings, even if they make a big, wild stink about how difficult it will be for them. Don’t frame their reactive feelings as your doing some kind of harm to them. Their own irrational frames and expectations are causing these reactions. Give them the gift of allowing them to process their reactions. With luck it will lead to their upgrading their frames and accepting your freedom to make aligned choices for you.

Self-Harm Threats

What if someone really goes over the top with their emotional manipulation, such as by threatening to hurt or kill themselves because you don’t play by their rules? If someone did that to me, I’d probably get really pissed at them. I might cuss them out for even suggesting that. I wouldn’t change my course though. If they hurt or kill themselves, that’s on them. I still don’t see myself feeling guilty about it, although I’d probably be very disappointed in their irrational behavior if they went that far. But in the end, I would let them go.

This has actually happen to me personally, and it has happened to people I know. Someone I knew once threatened to kill himself because I took a course of action he strongly disagreed with and which negatively affected him. He owned a gun, so I took it seriously. This was years before I started blogging by the way. I didn’t back down though. I felt disgusted by the very notion that someone would do that, but I saw it as his choice. I knew I was making the right decision, and that is how it turned out in the end. He recovered, and I think it was better for him all around too. The relationship wasn’t working for either of us, and we had to move on from it. The fact that he threatened suicide actually just made me more certain that moving on was the right choice.

If this sort of thing were to happen again today, I’d frame it as a test from reality. I’d frame it as a character sculpting challenge too. I’d take the threat seriously, even if I didn’t believe that the person would go through with it. But I would still refuse to be emotionally manipulated, even if it meant someone else reactively taking their own life.

My ex-wife Erin had to endure an even more serious test when her abusive boyfriend not only threatened to kill her but also her whole family if she ever left him. And she still ended up leaving. Many years later that guy shot himself dead with a shotgun in a standoff with police, who were actually just coming to his house to do a suicide check because he made an offhand comment about potentially harming himself to a coworker, who called it in.

You can frame such situations however you see fit, and depending on the severity of the threat, I wouldn’t fault you for backing down if the stakes seem too big to handle. But most situations that my readers deal with are a lot milder, and they blow them up into big hurdles. So if you’re dealing with less than a mass murder threat, perhaps take a hard look at how you’re handling this situation. Are you behaving rationally? Are you really listening to yourself? What will it do to your character to let someone else emotionally manipulate you for years and years?

Guilt also heals. Even if you do feel guilty, you’ll probably get past it eventually. How long do you think the guilt will really last? How long will the emotional manipulation last if you don’t move on?

If you betray someone’s expectations of you, you can let them have their reaction and not feel guilty about it. This may take some practice and some rational framing upgrades, but you can do it.

But don’t betray your own inner guidance. Don’t betray your own rational intelligence. Don’t betray your path with a heart. If you aren’t feeling guilty about self-betrayal, maybe you should listen to your feelings more closely.

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Being Stimulant-Free

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I like being 100% stimulant free – no coffee, caffeinated tea, chocolate, caffeinated soda, etc.

This means no decaf either since decaf still contains some caffeine.

I base this on lots of personal experimentation. I’ve gone some years of my life with no stimulants, and I’ve also gone for long stretches consuming coffee daily. The two modes of living are notably different.

Caffeine tends to make me obsess more over trivialities and lose focus on big picture goals. I see this pattern in other coffee drinkers often – lots of busywork type of thinking on low criticality items. It seems to make some people have a harder time focusing on long-term projects and avoiding short-term distractions.

When I consume coffee daily, I’ll check email more often. I’ll spend more time on social media. I’ll web surf more. I’ll invest in minor tasks that don’t need to be done. I’ll spend more time organizing and reorganizing instead of moving the needle forward on big projects. I’ll open more loops than I close. I’ll feel extra busy but have less to show for it.

Stimulants always drain me eventually, especially after months of daily use. That’s true even for a single espresso shot or a single cup of green tea per day. It always leads to adrenal exhaustion, and then I need to take at least several weeks off. I know I’m at this point when I can’t seem to make good progress on bigger projects, and I can tell that my mind is becoming too chaotic. I might spend 8 hours at my desk and get 90 minutes of important work done.

I love the taste of coffee, and it’s delightful to drink a cup of it, but I’ve learned that I can’t really have an occasional relationship with it if I want to function at my best. It’s way too addictive for me. If I have even a small amount, I risk slipping into the pattern of having it daily for months.

I’ve learned that it’s best to avoid chocolate too (including cacao) because chocolate is a gateway drug back to coffee. Same goes for green tea. So while I have enjoyed those in the past, I feel safer steering clear of them. I like how my brain works better when not under the influence of stimulants.

I’ve also learned not to trust my addicted brain. It has many tricks for luring me back in.

It’s just one piece of chocolate.

What if you just had a decaf or a half-caf?

You could just have a small amount?

You’re traveling, so why not indulge a little?

Hey, it’s free!

Coffee is so nice for socializing.

It’s Costa Rican coffee!

It’s 100% Kona!

The addicted brain can be downright evil sometimes.

When my mind is stimulant-free, it feels more chill. The volume of mental chatter is much quieter. I don’t feel like a rodent in a maze sniffing for the cheese constantly. It’s way easier to relax into bigger projects and stick with them with good discipline. I become much better at closing loops, and I become more discerning and careful about opening new ones.

My stimulant-free brain is more disciplined. It’s easier to get up before dawn. It’s easier to maintain good habits like exercise. And I feel fewer cravings for processed foods that go so well with coffee.

The most reliable brain booster is cardio exercise. I love the effects of that way better than coffee. Exercise rebalances my thinking while coffee tends to unbalance me. This morning I went for a 90-minute hill run, starting at 4:45am. That was a stimulating challenge, but it doesn’t create the crashing like coffee does. I feel a sense of accomplishment from running that I don’t get from finishing a cup of bean juice.

Whenever I detox from coffee, it takes about a week. It’s not too difficult to quit, but it’s way easier to slip back into addiction. I usually have mild headaches and extra fatigue on days 2-4, and then on days 5 and 6, I typically have to deal with feelings of dread and paranoia. The emotional detox is worse than the physical detox. Those feelings always pass though, and then around day 7, I start remembering how nice it feels to be caffeine-free. I remark at how calm and relaxed my mind feels.

If I want something hot to drink, I go with herbal tea. Lately I’ve been enjoying mint tea a lot.

Stimulants can too easily mask a lack of natural stimulation in our work and goals. Coffee can cover up underwhelming goals by making them seem more stimulating than they are. If you drop coffee, you may need to face that your goals and life path are duller than you’d like. Coffee hides that emotional truth from you.

Coffee can also do this in a relationship. If your relationship is underwhelming, you can drink more coffee to avoid dealing with that emotional truth. Having another cup is easier than facing the truth about your feelings.

When I drink coffee, my awareness narrows. Without coffee I feel like a much broader spectrum of my awareness comes back online again. I feel more connected to more parts of the world. I notice nature more. I hear the birds tweeting as the sun rises. And I notice the sunrise itself. Here’s a pic I took while running this morning:

Sunrise run

When I’m caffeine-free, I become more aware of just how boring and circular social media is. I see it as more distraction than stimulation, so I spend less time on it. I become more attuned to bigger creative projects and interesting challenges. I seek stimulation through goals and challenges that appeal to me. I get more excited about the path I’m on.

I like having a stimulating life, but I’d rather get it from stimulating goals and projects instead of taking drugs. I like the emotional honesty of that. If my life is under-stimulating, I want to be able to feel that, so I can take corrective action. I don’t want to drown those feelings under espresso shots. I want to feel and experience the true reality of life.

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Emotional Concussions

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This morning while listening to the audiobook League of Denial, which is about the NFL’s attempts to downplay and deny the serious links between football and degenerative brain damage, it struck me that the athletes themselves were in an untenable position. Imagine trying to defend yourself while suffering the many problems of a dysfunctional brain, including memory loss, severe mood swings, and an inability to concentrate. And imagine doing this when you’ve been part of a macho culture that teaches everyone to just suck it up and deal with the pain.

Yet people are still playing football, and their brains are still getting permanently damaged, along with those playing many other contact sports. And they’ll continue to suffer the predictable consequences. Our brains are not battering rams.

This got me thinking about the emotional equivalent, whereby people subject themselves to doing long-term damage to their minds through emotional neglect.

For instance, people deliberately take heartless jobs to pay their bills, subjecting themselves to a form of long-term emotional abuse. They overwork themselves and refuse to make sufficient time for play and relaxation. They neglect their health. They fail to practice good stress reduction methods.

Again and again we see the pattern where emotionally concussed people put themselves in situations where they’ll clearly be subjected to further emotional concussions, like the football player who takes a hard pounding, sees stars for a moment, and goes right back out on the field again.

Deep down I think many people know this will take a toll on them, but what they don’t necessarily see is that their damaged and neglected emotions are making it worse for them. Their concussed hearts are inviting further emotional concussions to occur because the heart isn’t aware enough to say no to that.

When your emotions are functioning well, and you consider taking a heartless job, your feelings will scream at you: WTF are you doing? No way! We’re not doing that! You’ll feel the intense wrongness of an idea that isn’t heart-aligned because your emotional intelligence is working properly.

Hence, if you seriously consider taking a heartless job, consider that there may be something very wrong with your emotional intelligence. If your feelings were functioning properly, they wouldn’t steer you down a path that’s likely to invite further emotional concussions, just as a rational and fully functioning brain wouldn’t encourage you to bash your head around.

But when you subject yourself to long-term emotional neglect and abuse (or if you’ve been subjected to this by acts not of your choosing), the damage accumulates slowly over time. You can’t trust the advice your mind feeds you any more than a brain-damaged athlete can trust that drinking anti-freeze is a good idea.

Recognizing that you can’t trust your feelings is a hard realization, but if you’ve suffered the equivalent of repeated emotional concussions, then your emotional intelligence could be severely lacking.

I fell into this trap when I was younger, as my emotions kept generating passion and excitement around illegal activities. I sabotaged myself academically and got expelled from college. I got arrested 4 times in 18 months and barely avoided a prison sentence. By trusting my erratic emotions, I was led astray into major irrational behavior. The safest thing I could do at the time was bury myself in video games.

Part of my recovery process was to stop trusting my feelings and letting them run my life. Another significant part of the process was that I started cleaning up my diet and exercising regularly. That helped rebalance my feelings, and the further I went down that path, the more I was able to rebuild trust and stability with my emotions. Now I trust my feelings implicitly. They’re a tremendously valuable guide, especially in business and relationships. I naturally find my head and heart agreeing on a wide variety of decisions.

I feel more emotionally resilient these days, and my feelings naturally steer me away from situations that would predictably invite emotional concussions. But the toughest part of recovery was to admit and accept that I was doing the equivalent of concussing myself. I was ruining my own life, and I absolutely needed to stop putting myself in situations that were going to invite further self-damage.

I feel lucky that I was able to turn around and go a different direction. Not everyone is so lucky.

If there is to be any kind of recovery, facing the truth is the first step. Denial must stop for healing to be possible.

When you look at your life and the situations that you invite and accept, do you need to make some kind of admission to yourself about a pattern of emotional self-concussion? Are you repeatedly showing up to situations that will predictably lead to more emotional concussions? Do you imagine that a fully functional heart-brain alliance would advise you to do what you’re currently doing with your life?

Self-trust is wonderful, but it needs to be rooted in rationality. If you’re inviting physical or emotional concussions through your decisions, admit to yourself that this isn’t rational behavior. Accept that it’s time to embark on a journey of healing. That journey may or may not succeed, but there are countless stories of people who have recovered from great physical and emotional trauma, and a common starting point was deciding that healing must finally become a priority.

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Training Your Mind

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This morning I got up at 4:30am and set out to do a 6.5-mile run (10.5km), which would be my longest in at least the past year. The weather was nice, starting out at 76 degrees, and I knew would continue to get cooler into the morning, at least until an hour or so after the sun came up.

I enjoyed the run very much, especially watching the sunrise while passing a local shopping mall and a baseball stadium.

I breezed through the 6.5 miles and decided to push myself a bit more, so I widened my intended loop on the way back to tackle an extra long hill. I ended up going a little over 8 miles (13km). I felt good afterwards. I’m sure I could have cranked out a few more miles, probably a half marathon if I really wanted to go that far. Maybe I’ll build up to that in the weeks ahead.

I’ve done lots of distance running before and ran the L.A. Marathon 20 years ago, but it’s different when building back up to distances that I’ve previously run. It was a big deal to me the first time I ran 10+ miles… and then a half marathon. In those days I was running distances I’d never run before. It’s been years since I’ve run 8+ miles, but it seemed easier because I’ve already gone way past that distance before.

When retracing distances I’ve already reached, it feels less dramatic and not as big of a deal. I still have to retrain my body to get there, but that’s easier than retraining my mind. Since my mind already knows I can do it, it doesn’t put up extra barriers. My mind doesn’t resist so much. It already knows how to cope with longer runs.

When I would train for longer distances 20+ years ago, I had to wrestle my mind into cooperating. It used to generate thoughts like:

  • This seems really far.
  • Won’t it be boring to run for that long?
  • Not even halfway yet… argh.
  • What if I run out of water along the way?
  • Still 3 more miles to go… that’s a lot.

But this morning I noticed my mind behaving differently, generating thoughts like these:

  • Twenty minutes done already… that was easy.
  • Remember that when the mind feels like it’s done, you’re only at 40% of capacity, so you’ve got way more in the tank that you realize.
  • Halfway… no problem, still feeling great.
  • What a beautiful sunrise. Let’s take a pic to remember this morning.
  • Six miles done. Not even a challenge. Let’s go to seven.
  • I could surely do another half mile.
  • We’re so close to eight miles… might as well top it off.
  • I could do more, but let’s save some for next week. This one feels complete.

Running with an untrained mind is more difficult. The untrained mind makes the physical effort feel harder. But when the mind is trained, it’s positive and cooperative, and it makes the experience of effort feel more pleasant and enjoyable. Even breathing hard and sweating up a hill feels good when the mind is aligned with it.

I’ve noticed this same effect in business too. The mind often resists when trying something new, but then as the mind gains more experience, it puts up less resistance and flows into positive cooperation.

One of the biggest barriers my mind put up was for international travel. My mind voiced so many objections that it’s no wonder I couldn’t make this part of my reality for many years. Once I pushed through that resistance though, international travel became relatively easy to access and enjoy.

One of the best ways to train the mind is to keep doing what it resists. Seek out its limitations, and create counter-experiences to destroy those limitations.

Maybe it seems odd to prove your own mind wrong, but it’s incredibly practical. What’s the alternative? Accept the limitations your mind foists upon you, and let them always limit you. No thanks.

What makes your mind become scared and whiny? What causes it to raise objection after objection till it wears you down with its “logic”? What makes your mind say, “You can’t do that”? Do you really need to own those thoughts? Why not annihilate those thoughts instead? They’re just thoughts, not reality.

I think it’s good to shove your mind kicking and screaming into those territories where it dares not explore. Push it to reconsider and reframe how it sees reality. Prove it wrong enough times, and it will begin to doubt its own certainties about failure, which opens the door to seeing more possibilities instead.

The mind can be trained, but not if you tolerate its whininess. When it gets whiny, give it the equivalent of extra push-ups instead. You say it’s too far? Great, now you have to surpass that. You say we can’t? Great, now you have to do it!

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How to Overcome Financial Pressure

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We just wrapped up the 2020 launch of Conscious Growth Club, and our next opening will be in April 2021. The launch did very well. We have 87 members enrolled in our next CGC year together. Financially this was our second six-figure launch of the year, the previous one being for the Stature course in January.

I received some feedback from people who really wanted to join CGC this year (some of them waiting months to sign up) but couldn’t do it because of financial challenges, especially related to the virus. Some had been recently laid off. Others have been reporting a business slowdown. Others are uncertain about the economy and want to conserve cash. All of this is totally understandable, and I’d never pressure anyone to join CGC if it would mean overextending themselves financially.

I spent most of my 20s broke and in debt and went through a bankruptcy in 1999. Financial stress was a big issue for me back then. So let me share some insights on how to reframe financial pressure, so it doesn’t keep haunting you and stressing you out for the rest of your days.

Framing Financial Pressure

How do you frame the presence of financial pressure, such as bills or expenses you’re not sure you can cover?

One way is to see such pressure as an annoyance. Maybe it’s something that pushes your buttons emotionally. But if you see it as something that irritates or bothers you, you’ll probably try to avoid dealing with it. Since this framing doesn’t help you resolve the source of the pressure, the pressure just continues.

The annoyance framing often leads to escapism. Many people try to retreat into using the law of attraction to fix their money problems, but that doesn’t usually work when the underlying relationship with financial pressure is rooted in annoyance.

Another option is to escalate it into a threat. Sometimes this will happen as an extension of framing financial pressure as an annoyance. If you avoid dealing with financial problems, they can multiply, and eventually the pressure becomes great enough that some part of your livelihood feels like it’s under threat. Maybe you’re at risk of losing your home, for instance.

Beyond that, you could try surrendering, which can grant some temporary relief emotionally, but by itself this doesn’t resolve the financial pressure either. You may feel a bit better, but you could still lose your home.

There’s also the obligation framing. I think this is mostly the annoyance framing in disguise. You may see financial pressure as a part of life where you just have to suck it up and deal with what arises. It’s not pretty, so just grit your teeth and handle it. But this framing tends to result in punting the problems to the future. You’ll do the minimum necessary to handle the immediate pressure, but it will just keep coming back for another round.

A Framing That Works

A framing that worked very well for me was to see financial pressure as an invitation. I imagine that reality is trying to help me train up my character in a positive way. The existence of financial pressure is an important part of the character training.

Imagine hiring a personal trainer to help you improve your fitness, and then framing your workouts as annoying, threatening, or obligatory. Are these really the best frames to use? How would your trainer feel about that?

It would make more sense to reconnect with the purpose for hiring the trainer and then connect with that purpose-driven frame as the reason for doing your workouts. This would establish a better relationship with your trainer as well, one based on mutual respect.

Do you respect the trainer that is financial pressure? Do you frame its presence as purposeful? Or do you treat it disrespectfully, like it’s some kind of scourge?

Having a strong purpose is a good motivator. Seeing the greater purpose behind a challenge makes the challenge feel more engaging and less stressful.

Be Trainable

When I was in my 20s, I wasn’t very trainable. I was most uncooperative when financial pressure made its presence known. I rejected its offer again and again, repeatedly slamming the door in its face. I kept trying to run from it and find respite. If only I could somehow make enough money, then it would stop chasing me.

Because of my framing, I believed that the solution to my problems was to make more money. But this is like saying that the best way to avoid doing difficult workouts is more fitness. If only you could become fit enough, then you wouldn’t have to workout anymore, and you’d no longer have to deal with that annoying personal trainer. So forget the trainer and just become more fit. Then you can ditch the trainer. Yeah, that makes sense. 😕

That sounds pretty silly when we look at it this way, right? Can you also recognize just equally silly it is to imagine that more money is the solution to financial pressure?

Embracing your financial pressure and respecting its purpose in your life is the solution. Say yes to the training invitation.

Do Your Financial Workouts

Just as I learned to accept and embrace the importance of physical exercise, I learned to embrace the importance of doing financial workouts too.

And just as it’s helpful to find exercise that you’ll like, it’s also helpful to discover the financial workouts you like. You have many options.

A financial workout could mean getting all of your accounting in good order. That’s pretty basic, but if that’s all you do, it will probably get a bit boring. There are people, however, who like this kind of financial workout, including updating their accounts daily. I’m happy to do these kinds of workouts monthly or quarterly though.

The financial workouts I enjoy most include exploring and testing creative and purposeful ways to generate income while serving others and enjoying the process. So they’re compound workouts that hit a lot of muscle groups.

I started small and worked my way into bigger workouts, just like you might do with physical training.

In the mid-1990s, I started learning how to generate income without having a job – badly at first and eventually with some modest degree of competence. I remember launching a computer game in 1999 that sold 50 copies at $10 each in its first month, so $500. The next month it did $1000… and $1500 the month after that. That was an exciting experience. But the real workout was to stretch my creative skills to design and code a game that could generate that result. Then I had to stretch myself to promote it widely.

I didn’t really frame it quite like this at the time, but looking back I realize that I kept giving myself interesting progressive training challenges with respect to money. I kept doing financial workouts of one kind or another. And the more I did that, the more my finances improved.

If you want to survive in business, then of course you have to find ways to generate income. But I think it’s especially helpful to frame these activities as financial workouts.

Doing your financial workouts is an intelligent way to deal with financial pressure. Build up your financial skills, so you can face that pressure from strength. And don’t get complacent.

Slacking Off

Just as we can slack off of exercise, we can also slack off from doing our financial workouts. I fell into that trap too. I could say I was focused on other parts of life, which was true, but I also let myself stagnate in the area of finances for some years. I kept doing token financial workouts (like affiliate deals) that were easy for me, but I wasn’t progressing.

What got me back in the game was to discover financial workouts that looked fun and engaging again. Just trying to make more money doesn’t cut it for me. I find that rather boring.

But if the constraints for a financial workout are just right, then it appeals to me, perhaps even excites me. If the workout looks fun and rewarding, then I’m much more drawn to do it. But if I only see boring workouts being accessible, then I’ll slack off.

And of course where do we find those interesting workouts? We find them outside of our comfort zones. We find them where we don’t dare to look.

Embrace the Training

Training is challenging, whether physical or financial. Don’t expect it to be otherwise if you’re doing it right.

Good training takes us outside of our comfort zones. When we become too comfortable, that’s when we need to mix things up and reintroduce novel forms of challenge.

Daily blogging is a form of training for me. I’ve never blogged every single day for a year, but I’m doing it this year. It’s not always easy, but I like what it’s doing for my character. It’s helping me become more focused, disciplined, and organized. My life and work have much better structure this year than last year.

For my financial workouts, I like doing creative launches. I love to use my creativity, resourcefulness, playfulness, and personal growth experience to create value for people. Then I like to combine that with making honest and ethical offers. This combo is challenging. It stretches me to train in areas that are weaknesses for me, such as advertising. But I like seeing myself continuing to get stronger. This last launch went very smoothly, and I’m seeing the benefits of my skills improving from doing the training – while also spotting more areas where I’d like to train harder.

The money isn’t the reward. That’s like saying that the reward is being able to lift a certain amount of weight. Money is just a number, and the weight is just a hunk of metal. Making more money isn’t the point at all.

The point is to train up your character to grow stronger.

When you use this framing, you won’t have to see financial pressure as your enemy. Allow it to be your friend instead. It’s an invitation to grow stronger.

You have many options for how you train. It matters more that you exercise than what kind of exercise you do, as long as you’re challenged and you’re growing and improving from the training effect.

If, however, you disrespect this invitation, reality isn’t going to reward you for that. The financial pressure will just keep haunting you year after year until you respect and accept its invitation.

Believe it or not, I actually like financial pressure these days. It’s fun. It’s like the invitation to lace up my running shoes and hit the road for a delightful pre-dawn run of a few miles. I used to majorly dislike financial pressure, but since that mindset didn’t work, I opted to befriend the pressure instead. That does work – very well in fact.

Just as there’s such as thing as runner’s high, it’s also fun to experience a high from financial workouts. Having a six-figure week is fun and stimulating. It’s so not about the money though, just as weight training isn’t about the weights. It’s about the experience and the training effect. It’s about being present to the challenge.

Financial pressure is not a demon, so don’t demonize it. If you do that, you’ll just stress yourself out. The trainer isn’t your enemy. Make the trainer of financial pressure your friend instead. Accept the invitation to push yourself. Find the financial workouts that appeal to you, and do them. Keep upping the challenge, so you don’t remain stuck in your comfort zone.

Most importantly, don’t train with the goal of making more money. Train with the goal of strengthening your character. Choose financial workouts that with this in mind, and you’ll make better choices. Otherwise you may try to find shortcuts to circumvent the training, equivalent to lifting heavier weights by using a forklift, which would defeat the purpose.

I chose to develop and launch courses as well as CGC not because these were convenient shortcuts to greater financial abundance but because they’re hard workouts. These projects challenge me deeply. They cause me to spend a lot of time training outside of my comfort zone. And I like the results of that. They’re great workouts for my character.

Making more money isn’t the real progression here. The progression is to transform yourself from a person who tries in vain to stay in your comfort zone into a person who embraces the growth benefits of uncomfortable challenges.

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Being Too Quiet

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When I was younger, I was conditioned to yield to authority. Go to school. Go to church. Obey the parents.

One of the most common commands was: Be quiet. Hush. Pipe down. Silence is a virtue. Children should be seen and not heard.

So I learned to stay quiet – about problems, about desires, about feelings. I developed a rich inner world, but supposedly it wasn’t meant to be shared. My thoughts were to be kept mostly to myself.

On the positive side, that made me more self-reliant. But it also ensured that I didn’t get to experience what I wanted, as the wants and the communication both got suppressed under a blanket of silence.

It took a long time to learn that it was okay to communicate about needs, desires, and feelings. As I got older, I found people encouraging me to open up and share more, such as friends in college. That was difficult to do though. I wasn’t used to it. When people wanted to know more about me, it felt like they were shining a burning spotlight into my soul. I couldn’t go there, so I shared various masks instead. I kept people at a safe distance.

But this left me stuck inside my own thought bubble with no way to break free from it. Because I couldn’t talk about what I felt, needed, and wanted, no one could help me make improvements. Even if people offered support, it was misguided because they didn’t really know what I wanted. They had to guess, and their guesses were wrong.

As I began making a long-term investment in personal development, I read lots of books and listened to many audio programs. I liked it when other people share their stories, goals, ambitions, mistakes, and feelings. Every now and then, I’d come across something that struck me as really honest and authentic. And I silently thought to myself, I could never do that.

What probably helped me shift the most was meeting people who were unconditionally accepting of other people’s wants, needs, and feelings. Around such people I felt like I could open up a little more. I sensed that I could trust them, even though I wasn’t sure why. I just naturally found myself sharing more honestly with them. It would feel off if I wore my masks around them too often. I was surprised when they didn’t judge me for my candor. They actually seemed to like and appreciate hearing the real truth and going deeper than the surface masks. It took a while for me to warm up to that since it was outside of my comfort zone.

There was a long progression with many steps forward and backward, like an awkward dance, but eventually I felt more comfortable sharing more of my inner world with people. I could talk about desires, problems, and feelings openly. I didn’t always feel drawn to do that, but I didn’t feel particularly blocked in doing so either.

And that’s mainly because I got to see the positive shifts in others when I did so. I made more authentic friends this way. But I was also able to experience more of what I wanted.

By saying, “I want to kiss you” instead of keeping silent, I kissed more.

By saying, “I have this frustrating tech problem,” I solved more tech problems.

By saying, “I feel so blah today,” I understood and shifted my feelings more easily, and my default state gradually became happier.

Initially my timing was off though. I was too hesitant to open up when the timing was right because the intensity was too great. But by waiting for the intensity to come down, I was late in expressing myself. I realized how lame I was being when I kept missing opportunities because of that tendency to hesitate.

For a while I got results like these:

Me: I kinda wanted to kiss you last night.

Her: I wish you’d said something. I would have gladly kissed you back.

Me: D’oh!

Me: Last month I had this frustrating tech problem that was a real mess, but I finally got it figured out.

Her: Oh… why didn’t you tell me about that when we last spoke? I had the same problem before, and I could have shown you how to fix it in two seconds.

Me: D’oh!

Me: I was feeling so blah yesterday.

Her: I could tell. I was thinking of offering you a nice head scratching, but it looked like you wanted some space.

Me: D’oh!

Why do we do this to ourselves?

Sharing late is at least better than not sharing. When you see how many opportunities you’re missing due to silence, it’s good motivation to be more courageous and speak up sooner.

Silence can be a virtue, but keeping quiet can be really problematic if you overdo it. How can you tell the difference?

Is the silence peaceful? Does it feel good to remain silent? If so, then enjoy the silience.

Is the silence stress-inducing? Are your thoughts and feelings churning over unresolved issues? If so, then speak up. Get that energy flowing outwardly. Don’t just keep it bottled up inside.

Also be careful not to merely vent sideways. Venting sideways would be doing the equivalent of this:

Me: I wanted to kiss her last night, but I couldn’t bring myself to go there.

Him: I saw the two of you together, and I’m pretty sure she would have liked it if you did.

Me: D’oh!

This is telling the wrong person. When you do this sort of thing, you’re channeling the energy sideways, which isn’t in the direction of resolution. It’s a sneakier form of staying silent. You may think you’re speaking up, but are you?

Sharing needs, desires, and feelings isn’t easy, especially if you were raised to keep quiet about them. It will feel edgy to lean towards opening up, and it will feel uncomfortable to trust that it’s okay to do this. You’ll catch yourself sharing masks repeatedly. And that’s okay. It’s a growth process. It takes time to peel the onion of silence, to find the true voice within, and to overcome expressive scarcity.

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Boost Your Happiness in 2 Minutes

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A fellow Conscious Growth Club member connected me with the simple practice of doing an easy pose for two minutes as an effective mood booster. I’ve noticed that when I do this pose now and then, it really does make me feel noticeably happier.

The pose is very simple. Stand up straight and tall, pull your shoulders back, and rotate your arms so that your palms face forward.

Here’s a short video from a chiropractor showing how to do it:

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This TED Talk video also shares more depth about the benefits of certain poses as well as which poses weaken you. I think it’s worth a watch.

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Try the power pose from the first video for two minutes, and see how it affects you. It’s an easy thing to forget though – I remembered to do it this morning because I added it to my Daily Reminders list.

It’s easy to lose sight of the body-mind connection, and it’s wise to remember that how you use one affects your range of expression with the other.

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Your Most Daunting Open Loops

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An open loop typically refers to an unfinished project, task, or assignment. Sometimes people will extend the definition to include their major goals as well.

I’ve been finding a lot of value in extending this concept to include anything that pops into my mind where I don’t feel that I’ve achieved sufficient closure. If my mind is dedicating some internal processing cycles to a thought pattern that isn’t aligned with what I’m doing in the moment, that’s a distraction. And many of those distractions come from unresolved open loops.

These open loops could be little things, like a past memory that pops up. Or they could be significant concerns, like trying to get clarity on the coronavirus situation.

So instead of just thinking of an open loop as an incomplete item on my to-do list, I think of it as any thought pattern that pulls my mind away from what I’m doing.

Resolving Open Loops

There are multiple ways to handle an open loop:

  • Fully complete it, so it’s 100% done.
  • Make a plan for how you’ll complete it.
  • Schedule on your calendar when you’ll plan it or complete it.
  • Push it down to a Someday / Maybe list to consider later, in which case you also need a routine for regularly reviewing that list, like once per calendar quarter.
  • Delegate or outsource it to someone else, in which case you still need to follow up to make sure they finish it, so it remains an open loop for you till they get it done.
  • Let it go if you can do that, which may include forgiveness, especially forgiving yourself.

When I extended my definition of open loops to include more than just action items, I found that these solutions generally applied as well. I just needed to be more creative in how I resolve different types of open loops.

Suppose I have a past memory that bugs or disturbs me. Maybe I have some trauma associated with it. That’s an unprocessed open loop. If I don’t resolve my feelings about the memory, it could continue disrupting me for years to come. Do I really want it to do that? Probably not. Is this a problem that can be solved? Yes. It’s a mental pattern, and mental patterns can be changed. Sometimes it takes a deep and serious effort to change an entrenched mental pattern, but as with many skills, the more you practice, the more you can lean on this skill when you need it. The Stature course in particular goes deep into these skills and practices.

One approach that almost universally fails with open loops is trying to resist them. If you try to resist a memory, that doesn’t work any better than trying to resist a project. The memory or the project will remain, patiently haunting you till you deal with it more proactively.

I’ve found that if I’m flexible and creative in my approach to processing just about any kind of open loop, I can bring it to resolution over time and feel that I’ve finally closed it. When the loop feels resolved and closed, my mind can relax a little more in that one area, and I’ve freed up some otherwise stuck mental energy.

Unresolved Open Loops

Here are some types of open loops that can be resolved if you invest enough in bringing them to closure:

  • Do you have an aligned morning routine that consistently gets you off to a strong start to each day? The lack of a good morning routine is an unresolved open loop. Same goes for a decent morning routine that’s inconsistently maintained.
  • Have you figured out how to consistently eat and exercise so that you feel good, have abundant energy, and don’t fight with your health habits? If not, that’s an open loop.
  • Do you have any chronic health conditions that are probably reversible? Do you know if they’re reversible or not? Have you done whatever it takes to fix them? This may require major lifestyle and habit changes. Is it possible though? If it’s possible to solve these problems and you haven’t solved them yet, that’s a significant open loop that could distract you. Imagine if you permanently solved these problems and could finally let them go for good. Alternatively, you could deeply welcome and accept them as-is. But if you still feel some resistance towards them, that’s an open loop.
  • Are you in a misaligned relationship? Or are you single and feeling misaligned with that? If you’re not feeling good about your relationship situation, that’s an open loop. It won’t go away on its own. It will just keep nagging you till you properly address it and finally solve it. Is this a solvable problem? Yes. You may need to do a ton of inner work, but many other people have done that, and they enjoy happy relationships as a result. Knowing that other people have already created situations that you desire could nag at you endlessly till you finally close this open loop for yourself.
  • How are you handling the current coronavirus situation? Are you able to handle the uncertainty regarding what will happen next? If not, then you haven’t processed the situation well enough yet. You may still need to do some reframing till you’ve come up with a flexible and adaptable strategy. If you’re feeling off balance, that’s an open loop. It’s possible to feel balanced and grounded amidst major changes and uncertainty.

Self-control

You may see a common pattern here. All of these require great self-control and self-discipline. There’s no getting around that.

Resisting the need for self-control is itself an open loop. If you try to fight the obviousness of this, the open loop will just keep staring at you. And you’ll keep spending more mental processing cycles thinking about it again and again. And again!

Another problem is that low self-control tends to create more open loops. If you don’t muster the resolve to close these open loops, they’ll eventually pile up, which can start to feel overwhelming. Then the temptation is to sink into constant self-distraction to avoid having to deal with them. A better solution is to recognize and admit the tremendous need to work on one’s self-control, and then train yourself to build that muscle.

Many open loops look smaller and less daunting when you build your self-control. The first step is just deciding that this matters to you and that you’ll need to invest in this for life.

Putting a good plan in place can help to quiet a pesky open loop, even if the plan isn’t very good and won’t actually work. But when you create a thorough plan that you truly believe can work, the effect is even stronger.

Our lives are filled with solvable problems that we haven’t actually solved, troublesome memories that we haven’t fully integrated, and relationship troubles that we haven’t fully forgiven or released. These are open loops.

A simple realization is that if you can develop better self-control, you can close more open loops because you’ll have more capacity to do so. But how do you build more self-control? You can build self-control by closing open loops.

Start by closing the easier open loops. Don’t just settle into busywork each day. Pick some open loops that you can fully close. Then close them. It’s like training with lighter weights before you move to heavier weights.

Closing Open Loops

This is how I like to flow through my workdays. I identify open loops that I’d like to close that day. Maybe I list a bunch of smaller open loops. Maybe I decide to tackle one big open loop. Or maybe I pick an open loop that’s a meaningful slice of a larger project. Then I prefer to work single-mindedly to close these loops one by one.

Having an article idea pop into my mind is an open loop. So to close that loop, I have to write and publish the article. I prefer to do that in one sitting when possible. I virtually never outline an article one day and then write and edit it the next day since that would leave an open loop overnight. If I’m going to give my attention to an open loop, I want to bring it to some form of closure before I move on to the next task or project.

It feels much more rewarding to me to close a few open loops during a day than it feels to chip away at a bunch of projects and not fully close anything. Driving tasks to full completion is often difficult and requires great tenacity sometimes, but nothing beats the feeling of getting to 100% done.

Processing the Coronavirus Open Loop

If you were reading my blog last month, you may have noticed that I focused intently on the coronavirus situation for a while, writing many articles about it. The virus introduced a major unresolved open loop to my life and to the lives of my readers, and I wanted to give it sufficient attention to fully process it until I could achieve some form of closure with it. Every day I tried to advance my understanding of the situation, make reasoned predictions, assess the risks, and make aligned decisions for how to proceed. I couldn’t just ignore that giant open loop and stick it on the back burner.

I found this extremely helpful. It allowed me to get up to speed quickly with the new reality. This helped me determine if I needed to make any course corrections or adaptations. For instance, I decided to drop the plan to do a new workshop in the Fall. There was too much uncertainty over the viability of that idea. So that was an open loop of uncertainty that I had to resolve and close. I can always add that project back when it becomes viable again, but I find it better to close that loop for now by taking it off my plate. That way I’m not dwelling on it in the back of my mind, and I can free up that mental energy for other projects.

Like many people, I also had to do some extra processing on Trump’s depths of lying, stupidity, incompetence, and utter ridiculousness in handling the virus situation. Pretty much every day, the news headlines is some form of, “Yup… Trump is still behaving like a toddler.” Sadly I’m not joking. I have to factor in how having a moron for a President could affect my life. That’s an open loop that takes some processing to resolve, so I don’t feel knocked off balance by his endless acts of idiocy. Interestingly, this actually lead me to feel more grateful and appreciative of sane, intelligent, and honest people.

Eventually I felt that I grasped the possibilities of the coronavirus situation well enough, and I’d done what I could to practice and promote the importance of social distancing early on (when it matters most). So this no longer felt like a major open loop in my life. While it’s still an ongoing and evolving situation, I’ve settled into a way of keeping up to date that feels balanced and doesn’t distract me while I’m working on other projects. Until the situation changes in some way I didn’t already factor in, I don’t feel that it needs as much direct personal attention anymore.

Growing Stronger

If you broaden your definition of open loops, what do you see? What still needs more processing to bring those open loops to full resolution? What thoughts and feelings still nag at you?

A good test is whether you feel chill about a situation. If you still feel some tension and your mind can’t relax, there’s more processing to be done to close the loop.

I find a lot of benefit in just asking: What would it really take to fully close this loop for the rest of my life?

Then I try to be deeply honest with myself. The answer may initially seem like it would take a Herculean effort, but it only seems so relative to my current strength. If I had Hercules’ strength, then a Herculean effort would seem pretty normal. Oh… it’s another Hydra… no problem! Then I see it as a character sculpting challenge to build the necessary strength, however long it takes.

This is my preferred way to frame persistent open loops that are extremely difficult to close. They’re character sculpting challenges, inviting me to grow into a smarter and more capable human being, so I can finally close them. If I don’t accept and commit to the growth challenge, I can never hope to close those open loops, and they’ll pester me for the rest of my life. Accepting the growth challenge is the wise choice then.

Even when it’s really difficult to do so, reaching the point of full closure of a persistent open loop can be so rewarding that it’s worth pursuing. The greatest reward is to experience the character you created in order to finally close those loops.

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Consistent Awakening Times

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One challenge that can make it difficult to create a consistent daily flow is getting up at inconsistent times throughout the week. If I get up at different times that could diverge by an hour or more, I find it difficult to have a consistent morning routine.

Initially I thought it shouldn’t make a big difference if I get up at 5am, 6am, or 7am. As long as I get enough sleep, I can run through my morning routine when I first awaken.

But for some reason, it does make a difference. I find it much harder to get my mind to follow the same morning routine if I try to run through it at different times of day. That could be because the cues are different, especially if I sometimes get up before dawn and sometimes after.

Another factor is how I feel about my awakening time emotionally. Getting up at 5am feels good to me. I feel more disciplined. I love being up before dawn and already gliding through the flow of my morning when the sun greets me.

If I don’t get up till after dawn, I start my day feeling slightly disappointed. The sunlight reminds me that I blew it. I feel that I’ve missed out on that serenely beautiful pre-dawn time that anchors me to my day. If the sun catches me in bed, it means I’ve missed the boat for that day. It corrupts how I feel about the day as a whole, even if I still have a pretty good day overall.

If I sleep in late, like till 6:30am or 7am, it throws off my rhythm. I feel out of sync with what I’m supposed to be doing. When I go downstairs and it’s already light in the kitchen, I feel a bit more confused about what to do. My internal and external cues aren’t the same. I can still generally flow through a decent routine, but it’s more effortful because I have to consciously think about each step. And some part of my mind is wasting energy processing thoughts like, “I should have gotten up at 5am,” or “If I’d gotten up at 5am, I’d already have a new article published by now, which would have been lovely, but now I’m stuck in the quantum universe where I slept in late.”

For these reasons I find that the ideal solution is to awaken at a fixed time each day. That one habit anchors my day. I’ve been doing that consistently lately, and I find that it adds such a beautiful flow to my days. Every day starts with a wondrous gift.

I absolutely love getting out of bed when it’s still dark. I like knowing that I got a few things done while the rest of the world is slumbering. When I write and publish a new article early in my day, it feels like I’m making a personal development breakfast for people to gift them with when they’re ready.

I find it best to do this seven days a week. Taking a day off here and there doesn’t feel like a reward or an easing of discipline. It feels like I’m denying myself the gift of the pre-dawn time that I love so much.

This simple daily discipline is a friend. It’s a trainer. I used to resist it and fight with it a lot, especially when I was younger. I’d rebel against the need for it. And I missed out on many of life’s gifts. Now I’m in tune with the flow of those gifts, and it’s a wonderful place to be.

I like to awaken with an alarm each day. It’s my gentle invitation to begin a fresh, new day. It’s not jarring or unpleasant. It’s the wrapping paper that contains the beautiful gift of that magical morning time. I never use the snooze feature; to do so would be like pushing the gift back in someone’s face.

What’s the first gift you could give yourself to begin each day? How do your best days typically begin? What would happen if you consistently gave yourself that gift every single day?

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