Intention Matters?

How do you view the world?

I have been listening to a lot of Joe Rogan’s podcast lately. There are a lot of reasons for this but the primary reason right now is I’m going through audio books so fast on audible that I needed something to listen to while I drive to the office or go on my walks. I had heard a lot of things about Joe and have even met him in person. There was negativity and vitriol spewed in his direction without a lot of thought or care given to many things. Now, I’m not saying the man is perfect or that I agree with everything or even most of what he says or insinuates. However, I think if you you spend enough time listening to his approach, give careful consideration to his tact and you’ll see a man simply searching for knowledge and understanding.

We live in a massively polarizing world right now. You are either with me or your against me is the attitude and it’s a frightening and over-simplified view on human interaction. There are so few people that are clear cut one thing or have clear cut left or right stances. Most of us lean right on this and left on that. The interesting reason, at least in my mind, has to do with your experiences. You aren’t and shouldn’t be just what you read and hear. You are a human and have evolved to become the person you are today from the experiences you have had. For some reason we have turned into this other thing where you are either on the side of completely being without empathy or you feel so disconnected you don’t care. Yes, there are other sides and I’m absolutely oversimplifying but the fact I have to say that is proof that you have to now be precise because conversation to get understanding is a dying skill.

What is most often missed is the empathy required up front of a conversation about hard things or even anything. Understand that peoples beliefs and understandings come from the experiences they have had in their life. No one has ever experienced the things you have, not in the way you have and in the sequence that you have. So if we all look at the world through a different lense, where did the empathy go? How did we lose the ability to have a conversation with respect and positive curiosity? Again, all very general ideas that are my own and thoughts I’ve been having since I was a teenager but my idea is that intention no longer matters and it has to. We understand that intention matters in some criminal formats like murder. Was your intention to plan and plot this or did it happen in a moment of passion and anger. There are levels for that. We understand intention but it has continually lost merit.

If I had any advice it would be to stop trying to win arguments and start trying to better understand the other side. Don’t ask yourself if they are right or wrong or whether or not you agree. Ask yourself what the intention is and I think you’ll find a more clearly defined path to have a meaningful and insightful conversation and maybe even view of the world.

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Embrace the Suck

Day two, it’s not much… but it’s not nothing either.

Here we are, day two. I have to be honest that I’m beyond happy and amazed with myself for getting back here and doing this again. I have struggled with feeling and telling myself that I was lazy for my whole adult life. I have spent the time over the last year trying to redefine what that feeling meant, where it comes from and most importantly: how to fix it. I’m not celebrating just yet as things change. There are new challenges every day that throw a wrench into the plans that I put into place.

At the beginning of 2022 I recognized that what I lacked in many areas of my personal life, outside of work, was consistency. And to a certain extent it was also affecting my work. It took me an entire year to realize that the word I was focusing on wasn’t the root cause of my problems. It was a problem and maybe “the” problem. However, it was too broad and generic a term to really get down to the basics of why I was struggling in so many areas of my life.

I did some deep diving, some soul searching and some reading. What I found is that the root cause of nearly every issue that I have is a lack of discipline. The lack of discipline can be, in part, can be derived from a weak mental mindset. Now I know that this is still quite general and is going to require a lot more thinking and a ton more work. Work that isn’t a today thing, or a off and on thing. This is work that will never end as life isn’t easy. It’s not supposed to be easy.

I am working to build a mentality that includes a lot of clichés. I want to learn and embrace enjoying the journey, embrace the suck! I want to build a frame work in my mind of positivity and not allowing things that don’t go according to plan to ruin the path or the forward momentum. Life is going to throw shit at you and I know you have experience that immediate roller coaster feeling of accomplishing something big or getting to a place where you feel like you’ve finally figured it all out and then BOOM!… the next minute shit has hit the fan and everything changes. I want that explosion to create new and exciting experiences rather than ruining the mind frame, killing momentum and creating a rut that takes time to get out of. It’s time to get to work and stop living a mediocre life. You can’t define that for me… but right now neither can I. Day two in the books, here we go.

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Just the Beginning

The beginnings of a lifelong mental reset

I have dreamed of having a blog for a long time and have always wanted a writing project. I have started a book multiple times and have yet to finish it. Many ideas of how to do this and where to start have come and go. The subject matter has done just the same. Nothing has stuck and thankfully for good reason.

I have spent the last couple of years trying to dig deep into the recesses of my mind to try to find some answers to some of the biggest questions. Who am I? What do I want out of this life? Why do I want what I want? What and who is the driving force behind these reasons? All of these things have continued to circle over and over and I can’t really say that I have any absolutes to any of this. However, after reading a few books recently and after failing to truly start the book I want to write I have come to a few unmistakable conclusions.

The first and most important is that life is ever changing. I know this seems cliché and obvious but until you truly accept that fact that nearly everything is changing all the time, you will always be lost. It’s absolutely vital to embrace the change, accept the suck and just keep moving forward. This is something I have always struggled with. I have zero patience. I don’t say this lightly, I mean zero. There are short stints of patience like with clients and strangers which I’m sure can seem odd to some but this is a deep part of who I am that I can and will discuss on a later day.

The other is that “motion creates emotion”. I have spent too many years being mediocre and it is a self-deprecating and self-fulfilling mentality. It’s been since my early twenties that I truly felt obsessed to live life to it’s fullest and the one thing that changed was the ability and willingness to just move. Get up and get going. I can attribute this not so new idea to the willingness to read a few books and have a very real conversation with myself about what is going on to allow for such a mediocre existence. Now, when I say mediocre I don’t mean that I’m not good at my job. I don’t mean that I’m not a good husband or father. I mean that I have a little voice in my head that says you can be better, you can do more and most importantly you have dreams that are not as far out of reach as you once lied to yourself about. The reason is there’s another little voice in your head that makes excuses and says that you’ve done enough, you don’t need those dreams, it’s okay to watch TV right now. It’s not that those things aren’t and can’t be true… but I don’t want them to be true for me. The reason I’m writing what I’m writing right now is I need the outlet. I want to write my book but I have realized that I can’t write the book until I answer the big questions above and I especially can’t write it while living life well below the abilities that I have. I can’t write a book that is based on ideas and not experiences. I hope you join me for this journey and maybe we can all learn something from each other.

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