Life Advice

The Daily Man-Up

December 1, 2020 Leave a Comment

15 Things You Should Give Up to Turn Your Dreams into Reality

There are times in life where everyone feels tired and weighed down. Every day we work for our goals and dreams, but it feels like we’re running in quicksand. Of course, we knew the journey would be long and treacherous. But we never expected it to be this long or this treacherous.

You think to yourself, “maybe I need more gusto, a little more oomph.” But what if you need to lighten the load? Sometimes, the key to achieving your dreams is releasing the baggage you carry. You don’t need to pick up more stones. Focus on the essentials and let go of the rest.

Many of these things you can give up today, while others will require work. But remember, “if you can dream it, you can do it.”

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The Daily Man-Up

November 23, 2020 Leave a Comment

dont take anything personally

Don’t Take Anything Personally

Whatever happens around you, don’t take it personally. Using an earlier example, if I see you on the street and I say, "Hey, you are so stupid," without knowing you, it’s not about you; it’s about me. If you take it personally, then perhaps you believe you are stupid. Maybe you think to yourself, "How does he know? Is he clairvoyant, or can everybody see how stupid I am?"

Nothing other people do is because of you. It is because of themselves. All people live in their own dream, in their own mind; they are in a completely different world from the one we live in. When we take something personally, we make the assumption that they know what is in our world, and we try to impose our world on their world.

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The Daily Man-Up

November 19, 2020 Leave a Comment

The Daily Man-Up

November 18, 2020 Leave a Comment

Regret #1: I Wish I’d Lived a Life True to Myself Instead of the Life Others Wanted me to Live

Not the life other people wanted for me.

Or the life portrayed by popular movies, TV shows, and social media.

Or the life of my parents’ unfulfilled dreams.

Not the life my friends told me I should live, believing they knew all the answers, and telling me I should dedicate my finite time to the goals they were blindly pursuing.

None of these lives are yours. None of them belong to you at all. You have to listen to that voice deep inside your head – the one that softly whispers, “There’s a better choice. Have the courage to walk in that direction…”

One of the biggest regrets of men is that they waste their lives pursuing things that are inauthentic and incongruent with their deepest desires.

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The Daily Man-Up

November 13, 2020 Leave a Comment

get rich quick schemes

(photo: @ohutcherson)

If you’ve ever drank the Kool-Aid of one of those ” How to get ridiculously rich and passively become a millionaire in thirty days with no money down by working 4 hours per week from your kitchen table in your bathrobe” best sellers, or promotions you see every other person on facebook peddling these days…chances are you are in worse financial shape now then when you started.

I see people posting income claims from offers that would fall into this category on social media daily.

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The Daily Man-Up

November 10, 2020 Leave a Comment

pain is temporary

“Pain is temporary. Quitting lasts forever”.

Build character, when you give up you aren’t just giving up right now. You’re giving up for all situations that gets that tough in the future.

I used to see it as just another variation of pain is temporary but victory lasts forever, but now I see it’s portraying a completely different message to it. It’s about the two different mentalities you can have in life. You can either be a quitter or getter. The problem with being a quitter is that it becomes a habit. You will always start to quit when it gets hard to that point, and you wouldn’t able to push yourself any further. Meaning, you won’t be able to evolve as a person. When you quit, the exact same pain doesn’t ever go away. It remains there until the next time you have to face it. The exact same pain that’s temporary becomes permanent as long as you keep quitting. So the next time you think about quitting think about what you’re projecting to the universe.

– BrawlStarler

The Daily Man-Up

November 6, 2020 Leave a Comment

mans search for meaning

The experiences of camp life show that man does have a choice of action. There were enough examples, often of a heroic nature, which proved that apathy could be overcome, irritability suppressed. Man can preserve a vestige of spiritual freedom, of independence of mind, even in such terrible conditions of psychic and physical stress.

We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms –to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s way.

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The Daily Man-Up

November 4, 2020 Leave a Comment

the time is now

When I was 13 I wanted to learn guitar but I saw on TV some kid who was 11 and a child prodigy and I thought "I waited too long, now I’ll be a beginner while kids like that already are great".

Then I was 23 and thought "oh man if I had just started at 13 I would have ten years experience by now! But now why bother?"

At 33 I realized, damn if I had just started at 23 I would probably be pretty good at this by now, but now I’m old and would feel weird in a beginner class at this age, so I didn’t.

At 43 I thought, why did I ever care about what people would think instead of realizing I wanted to do something, but didn’t out of fear and regret, and because I kept thinking about the amount of time I’d already wasted, instead of the fact that RIGHT NOW is simultaneously the oldest I’ve ever been, and the youngest I will ever be again. Now is the time. For everything. Always.

Just start a new game.

The Daily Man-Up

November 2, 2020 Leave a Comment

Stop considering whether people like you and start considering whether you like them

I used to always have that voice in the back of my head, do they like me? are they judging me? Always thinking that it held me back from being social.

You can control how you act. You can’t control whether or not people are going to like you. Some people might be really insecure and find reasons to dislike you for no reason. But even if you changed those things about yourself they would find some other reason to dislike you because you’re not the problem.

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The Daily Man-Up

October 30, 2020 Leave a Comment

lessons learned from prison

The World Breaks Everyone: 3 Steps I Learned In Prison to Put Myself Back Together

I was arrested by the FBI, pleaded guilty to one count of mail fraud and was sentenced to two years of Federal Prison.

I lost everything. All because of the choices I made.

It’s been an incredible, challenging, frightening journey. A massive part of that journey was the fall to my personal rock-bottom.

That fall led me to write the following on New Years Day, 2015, my TEDx chronicles that journey in even more detail if you are interested.

“I cannot shake the image that 2015 is going to be the year I put a bullet in my head. I see myself making it through prison, making it to halfway, and the next vision I see is a pistol in my mouth or at my temple. I want to tell someone but I’m ashamed. I’m ashamed of being weak. I know how much it would hurt my loved ones. But the way I feel, the self-loathing, the amount of shame I carry, I have a hard time being in front of my loved ones. I’m no good to them, I can’t even face them. Why won’t it just end?”

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