Self-Improvement

The Daily Man-Up

August 18, 2020 Leave a Comment

When we’re being honest with ourselves, we usually know exactly what we need to be spending our time on. We know what’s the most important thing for us to do. And ironically, it’s the most important stuff that it’s easiest to delay!

Regular exercise, practicing your musical hobby, working on your project, or taking a new step with your business… these can all be delayed another day without any serious consequence. No question about it. We can do it tomorrow.

Instead of taking the next important step on our most important work we can just keep doing what we’re already doing, moving along the same track that we’ve been moving on all this time up until now.

This is fine and perfectly forgivable, but it also means that you are not moving along your highest path. You’re stagnating. You’re wasting your potential!

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The Daily Man-Up

August 10, 2020 Leave a Comment

Don’t think “If I had only done XXX for the last year”, instead think “If I spend the next year doing XXX, just imagine how amazing it will be” (Re-frame your mindset from past-focused to future/present-focused)

I feel like too many times we look back with regret at what we HAVEN’T done in the past.

And that does you little good.

Past-focused mindset

“If I had only started playing guitar 2 years ago when my friend did, I would have been so good by now.”

“If I had only stuck to my diet 6 months back I’d be in such great shape today.”

“If I had only spent the last year being productive instead of spending most of my time distracting myself with games/TV, I would be so much more successful.”

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The Daily Man-Up

August 7, 2020 Leave a Comment

No porn.

The programming: Indulge your hedonistic desires to your heart’s content. It’s normal, healthy and free.

Except… It’s not normal. The monkey brain wasn’t made for the world of on-demand, high-def, infinite-variety porn that can be delivered straight into the eye sockets of anybody with a working internet connection.

Porn, like compulsive gambling and spree shopping, is an extreme example of the brain’s reward system being highjacked by an exaggerated version of a naturally healthy stimulus. Just as the gambler needs to keep pulling that lever to get their dopamine fix, so do porn addicts learn to blunt themselves into docile submissiveness with their habit.

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The Daily Man-Up

August 6, 2020 Leave a Comment

Stop multitasking.

The programming: Rapidly flick from one screen to the next. Notifications popping up to tell you about everything, all the time. Answer emails while walking to the coffee shop. Check your social media during the lecture. It all feels super-productive, but multi-tasking crushes productivity, increases frustrating, and saps your energies. A day spent multitasking is a day wasted. A life spent multitasking is fractious and ineffectual.

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The Daily Man-Up

August 5, 2020 Leave a Comment

(photo: @jens_johnsson)

Displace digital from its central role in your life.

The programming: Look at your phone. Look at your TV. Look at your computer. Answer this message. Respond to this prompt. Look here. Look here. Look here.

In the attention economy, your time and headspace are more valuable than ever — which has spawned a massive ecosystem of profit-driven companies who compete for it. Unguarded, you’ll find yourself doing their bidding — clicking, tapping and swiping as life goes by.

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The Daily Man-Up

August 4, 2020 Leave a Comment

Be purposeful about digital

The programming: Turn to a screen whenever you need something. Anxious? Upset? Lonely? Bored? The screen has what you need. Paw at the screen like it’s a slot machine. Trigger those hits of dopamine. Relish your superiority. It’s fine to take a spin on the hamster wheel of impulse gratification every once in a while. Where it kills you is when it becomes a way of life. When your every waking moment is filled with Instagram binges, and little tappy games, and refreshing your news apps, and texting friends, then — that’s where your dreams die.

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The Daily Man-Up

August 3, 2020 Leave a Comment

start small

Start Small

I’ve noticed on the internet that people literally want to change their lives overnight. That’s not the way things work.

It’s like being able to bench 100lbs and expecting to bench 1000lbs the next day. It takes time.

Don’t have an all or nothing mentality.

A few years ago I started meditating. I told myself, “I’m going to meditate 30 minutes a day!”

That’s challenge.

For the next six months I’d only hit my goal maybe 5 times a month, and I’d keep beating myself up.

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The Daily Man-Up

July 29, 2020 Leave a Comment

theodore roosevelt

Decades ago, Theodore Roosevelt called his fellow Americans to embrace the strenuous life. He called for them to seek struggle and to avoid ease. He saw that life, not only success, is found in a strenuous life, and that death and a life wasted is found and created in an easy life.

To truly live a successful life, one filled with action, purpose and growth, we have to gravitate toward, and embrace, pain and struggle. We have to push ourselves beyond what we can currently accomplish, so we can accomplish greater things tomorrow.

To avoid the struggle is to be ignorant of not only the battle being waged by an unseen enemy in our lives, but to avoid life.

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The Daily Man-Up

July 17, 2020 Leave a Comment

Any progress is good progress. Rome wasn’t built in a day. You can’t edit a blank page etc. Don’t expect to go from a lazy, unstructured layabout to Mr efficient marathon running supersoldier overnight, over a week, over a month, hell even over a year – this is setting (often deliberately) unrealistic expectations for yourself and setting yourself up for disappointment.

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