Get a job they said, it’ll be fun they said… Study a career they said, it’ll be fun they said…
I’m about to stop you right now. I was 19 when I made the decision to follow my heart and discover, no matter what it took. Granted I was following the words of our mutual friend Benjamin Franklin..
… and granted, I was severely lacking in confidence. Even if my clarity came though moments where my confidence was more like a grandiose summit I’d reach before plummeting back down into the valley of doubt and wondering.
All this to say that where you are today reflects the choices you made 10 years ago. Maybe I am rehashing someone’s quote, I have searched but could not find the author or it sadly.. But the point is that if today, you are somewhere you don’t like, it’s probably and most likely because you were following other peoples idea’s of what success means, or trying to succeed in their eyes, or that you weren’t listening to yourself. Or any other number of reasons…
Today, if you have a day job, I consider that to be a disadvantage. Not from the vantage point of trying to survive, obviously it would be foolish and stupid to say that having a job today is a bad thing if it puts a roof over your head. But that isn’t the point of this article nor of this blog and if you’re triggered, you’re missing the entire point.
In today’s world, having a day job is a disadvantage, especially when it comes to the creative pursuit. If you want to live a life of freedom, then you’ll need to act accordingly. I won’t forget that it’s important to have a balance of freedom and something important that you work for, a sense of passion, instead of something you hate that puts food on the table. Ultimately you’ll waste a lot of life doing something you didn’t want to do…
Obviously we all want money, or you’re probably in denial if it isn’t the case. But, if you trade having the security of 200euros per month from a job which pays you 1200, then you’re not going to be able to use that 200 other than to soothe the pain you create making it through long hours of hard-work for someone else. Not to mention, when you quit your job, you won’t have much of a security other than what you’ve been able to save away.
Now, trading the security and social pride of having a secure position at a firm, which you’ve studied for years to ensure… for the unknown, to discover what it is that makes you tick, what makes you happy, what you enjoy, what you despise, etc. Is obviously an expensive and risky… risk. But, knowing deep down that you have an intangible faith, a belief that you will triumph and overcome the obstacles, that you will succeed somehow, because you have some unspoken vision deep down underneath, changes your entire journey and ultimately will help you obtain it. You’ll end up with the possibility of a cushy luxury life others can only dream of.
There are many times where you will doubt everything you’re going through, and wonder what the point of it all is. You’ll wonder why you’re even here, and you’ll even question the point of living. Though, that’s where the faith comes in…
Having a job, although it gives you a firm conviction that you’ve somehow made it, is a false illusion of security. You still have to get up in the morning to jump through a few hoops so you can prove you’re not an entirely worthless asset to the company. It won’t however build you the structure and confidence to stand on your own two feet and create what you envision.
If you want to take the bridge over to “entrepreneurship” and the “creative life”, you’ll have to come to terms with the painful reality that you’ll doubt and go through painful self reflection on a recurring basis. You’ll become a seeker, you’ll have to find ease with the difficulty you go through on a daily basis. Questioning family patterns, group patterns, facing isolation, facing your own doubts and judgements, having to look at why you feel down, why you feel bad, why you feel like shit. You’ll question everything. If crossing the bridge to get to the creative life is something you consider, try considering living with your family and getting on with them first, consider going through the burning pits of hell and then having to scramble back to the “socially acceptable box” you fell from to then aim higher, consider losing everything you know and love and your notoriety and material possessions, and the list goes on…
But, if all the possible things you’ve considered are worth going through to achieve your vision, what you’re hoping for… In that case, there is hope and combined with the faith you fortify along the way, there is possibility to endure…
Another point, because tonight I’ve decided to bash jobs a tad more than usual, is that while you’re on the job your mind is focussed on solving problems you’ve given. You’re given ressources to solve the problem, which means that your mind is busy churning out solutions or searching for them like a micro factory. Your mind is then saturated for anything you want to focus on outside of work, in fact your entire energy ressources will be based upon and invested in something going the other way. Even a year after or two even, your mind will still have knowledge from focussing on those problems. I’m all for having an eclectic knowledge, in fact I pride myself upon having multiple sources and multiple allegories like in “Range”… but… if your primary focus isn’t upon building your internal vision, you’ll end up going in a direction which isn’t entirely of your choosing.
“Don’t quit. Never give up trying to build the world you can see, even if others can’t see it. Listen to your drum and your drum only. It’s the one that makes the sweetest sound.” —Simon Sinek
It takes time, and you’ll wonder what weird pipe you went down, but ultimately, you’ll discover that the freedom you inherit from stepping out of the known trodden path will lead you to higher hights than you could have ever imagined, according to the fact you believe in yourself enough to do so…
“You know how they say “the 5 people you spend your time with influences who you become” ?”
Hi! Welcome to my blog, I hope this post finds you well in this festive and comfortable season!
You know how they say “the 5 people you spend your time with influences who you become” ? Well, we don’t always have the possibility to chose the people we want to have around us. Right?
Wrong!
Until recently, the idea that my fate would be tied to my location, the people around me (whether I like them or not, or even if I aspire to them or not…) as well as their minds, was something which created a specific amount of anxiety for me. Not that I fear the people around me or my circumstances, nothing could be further from the truth. Although, I am particularly picky about the time I spend, the attention I give and the subjects I want to devote my time to… Though, the idea that my life is influenced by those around me and I have no control over those around me can produce a specific amount of worry. I really don’t want to pick up on certain habits, certain mind process’s or ways that don’t suit who I am developing myself to be.
On the one hand, picking people for your life is essential. In the doing we underline the examples we wish to copy. Like monkey’s we pick up on speech patterns, body language and other such subtleties which have made an impression on us because we have either liked the person or disliked them.
Csikszent Mihaly explains in his book Flow that “attention is our most important tool in the task of improving the quality of experience.“. And deciding who and what we give our attention to influences our lives in many subtle and important ways!
If you live in a town, going out and meeting someone specific to spend time with might be a bit of a challenge. Although not impossible, the chances are slim that the exact right people you need will be on your path with the same distinct reasons as you.
In fact, you’d probably waste more time and energy out and about than you would proactively getting done everything on your Important x Urgent list.
This being said, you’re probably thinking we’re incredibly off topic. We’re not.
Taking in to account that some people leave us depleted and tired after spending time with them. Some even go as far as saying specific people are “Energy Vampires”, or “Narcissists“. Though, lets stay on topic, I nearly lost you a few moments ago… We’d rather leave conversations with people, feeling empowered, feeling confident and bold, ready to take on the world, right?
So how do we achieve that?
How do we find the people we aspire to?
How do we encounter those so-called people we admire?
And how on earth do we create our team of smart, high achieving, high energy people?
It all starts with Self: We start by focussing on ourselves. Focussing on ourselves is the surest of ways to discover what we like, what we dislike, understand how we feel about this or that, as well as discover what we’re curious about. And this takes time, investment, and even going through the nitty gritty emotions. YIKES, I know you’re hating me right about now.. But it’s true. Going through our nitty gritty emotions by ourselves over and over again is how we grow and ultimately overcome them. Be patient with yourself!
Procrastination: Having spent a vast amount of time on naval gazing, as you might put it. I’d like to invite you to reconsider your perception of Procrastination. It is there for a reason, so no pressure, embrace it and learn to invite it into your life. I generally procrastinate when my energy is saturated, I’m tired or low energy, or I need to breath from the depths I immerse myself with complicated topics.
FocusMate: Okay, this might perhaps be the most important part of this article. The tool which enables you, with the right perception, to network, to grow, to exchange, and also to stay where you are and save your energy for better things. You know, the productivity and creativity in pt.2 and the well-being I’m about to express in pt.4? Yes Ladies and Gentlemen, I’m talking about FocusMate.
Focusmate is an online Website/App which is meant to help you with your productivity and stay distraction free, focussed on your goals. Thats the primary reason we use Focusmate. The secondary reason is not what it is programmed to do, but what is most beneficial to everyone you encounter. Smile, be Warm, be Yourself, and share. You might end up meeting some really interesting, upbeat people you’d never get the opportunity to encounter otherwise.
Energy, energy, energy... Yes, we’ve talked about that a lot haven’t I? You’ll need energy if you want to produce, work, focus on anything. This means you’ll need good healthy food. This also means that you’ll need to channel the energy you do have into meaningful productive practices which give you an ROI. I’ll talk about this in my next article.
Structure. Yes, in order to use everything I’m talking about and something you can rely on, you’ll need a structure a ‘goto’ reference which is tangible and malleable. For this, I use the good old Whiteboard, a written structured list compartmentalised and the help of some tools I will add at the end of the article.
By using these 5 points, I get to meet high energy, ambitious people on a daily basis. I attract them because I am myself on that high level frequency (The exercises, The food help to develop the energy for this). And I’m able to do it often because I’m following a structure I created for myself which allows me to follow it even if I have no clue of what I’m doing that day or even feeling a bit hazy…
I thought I’d add some goodies:
Here are a Few Tools I like and use on a daily basis which get me to better focus, produce or simply keep track of what I’m doing or where I’m going.
Tools:
Create an Effective todo list: Learning how to create an effective todo list can prove invaluable. This article has been life changing in how it has effected my todo list creation. In that before I actually didn’t know how to create on effectively. I also added the notion of the Eisenhower Matrix in that I will only put what is urgent and important & important and not urgent.
https://www.notion.so/: So you need to go to the Office to have a physical layout of what needs to be done and what has been done? NO NEED! Notion is the perfect app for tracking and organising tasks, for business or simply for home. You can keep track of
https://habitshareapp.com/: You know how I talked about developing habits earlier on in the article, the concept that you can track your actions over the course of time and visualise your progress and percentage of accuracy.
https://slack.com/: I’ve found that if you want to distribute a research, a message, and target a specific group of people, Slack is the best place to do so. Let me explain before you judge me as someone exploiting the indigenous tribes… While I was working on a startup in Fin-tech I needed to find a FullStack Developer capable of building the App. While I had no clue of how to grasp a developer, especially in the midst of a COVID lockdown, I got creative. Low and behold, I found 35 developers by targeting Digital Nomad slack communities in the space of 1 week! Need I say more?
https://discord.com/ People like to use this for gaming, because that is what it is originally used for. Though, I use it for the TEAM to talk on in order to get work done without the hassle of planning call’s etc. Once everyone is subscribed, its fairly easy, everyone can have a reachable online office to do their work. And the messaging system is pretty simple.
https://www.focusmate.com/ Conceived as a studying platform, I figured out after a while that it could be a place to network and find likeminded people, according that you do it right and don’t overstep boundaries etc. People are generally open to discussing what they do, they’ll tell you about their goals at the start of every session and you can use it for training your elevator pitch for Work, Social, Partnerships, learning about new tools or insights, hek even relationships why don’t you. But really.. do it correctly, no one wants unwanted harassment in the privacy of their own home!
Our standards have drastically been altered. Being confronted with a constant visual stimulus of change has hardwired us to pick, sift and sort what we think we most desire and/or (depending on our evolution) need in order to be happy, or in other words, what we think we need in order to fit into our respective groupe/tribe.
The emergence of social media and internet has given us insight, in fact tremendous insight, into our core fibers as singular individuals among the crowd in which we blend day in and day out in our everyday lives. Having a smart phone with access to everything happening everywhere all the time, has given us an almost God-like impression of power over our decisions and choices regarding what we do with our time, money and effort. Yet, if we look closely, we’re very far from God like action.
Mostly anyone with an instagram account has had access to entrepreneurial information, insight into beauty tips, luxury tips, photography, bitcoin, world pollution… ; this leads us to learn how to acknowledge our neighbors and understand a bit (a lot) about them. Which also creates an envy for others lives, which can be perceived as “healthy peer pressure” in order to up our standards. Or most likely, people can up their standards so high that human beings cannot attain them… This can also create pressure that we cannot support due to not being in the right frame or mind or health. Which can trigger profound things in us. This also leads to a downside, that some of us are starting to encounter. Virtual realities and especially make-believe realities do not exist or are physically unachievable and the actuality of the lives lived on Instagram aren’t always as glamorous as they seem.
Our attention span has been shortened and people who are avid users, tend to “log off” from their tangible realities as soon as what is being said/seen doesn’t interest them. This also applies for discussions, dating, and many other topics. Could we say people’s patience has been shortened too?
This breeds a lack of tolerance for anyone who isn’t already in a space of mastery. Which seems inhumain from the perception of anyone who is a little weak, or who hasn’t yet reached that level of success in their domain.
We witness a Big contrast between one’s reality and other peoples realities, which makes it hard to accept the realities some of us are experiencing. If we don’t own a 7 star hotel in Dubai, are we worthy of anyone’s attention? Lets hope kindness and humor make up for our apparent material lack..
Lots of time wasting dreaming about what others are doing in some distant paradise, while we twiddle our thumbs in our dingy humid caves.
Judgement precision bias. People are now judged on their profiles. Instead of actually knowing about the people at hand. We now get to see the people we are talking to, we see their photography skills, their surroundings, and we see what they stand for, or at least their capacity to sell or write themselves up, or not.
Will we get back to meeting people like we used to? Do we really need our phones in order to live optimal lives? Do we need to keep up with everything? …
Why social media is a painfully unrealistic indicator of comparison?
Before social media, and expanding our knowledge of what others have, we ultimately weren’t worried about missing out or even aware that other people had it so good, or had differently. The idea that everyone gets to see what is happening next door is also detrimental. For a number of reasons. 1- Constant need to keep up with what is going on next door. 2- We can’t compete with others without destroying ourselves in the process. We can only compete with our own limitations. 3- The fear of missing out paralyses the individual in a state of needing to constantly check what is going on which furthers the vicious loop. 4- Privacy no longer has any meaning. 5- Everyone wants what everyone else has. Originality therefore suffers. 6- What was once rare, is now common place. 7- Time can be spent going between our own inadequacy, and others over-achievements in comparison. 8- We lose track of our own rhythm and thus get stressed out. Is life good in contrast to everyone else’s success in life on social media? No, it’s shit and we all have to lose by focusing so much on content being thrown at us from the four corners of the globe. It’s insane. Today, in one single day, we access more information than that of a human in his entire life, only 400 years ago. It is crucial to sift and sort, and pick content value which gives us meaning, fulfillment.
Just absorbing information is the surest of ways to burn out our mind and nervous system. It makes for the need to be a specialist in everyone’s eyes. It gives exposure to people who have more resources. It pushes people to become loud speakers, and do crazy things in order to have fame and social recognition. It synchronizes us with the rest of the world and people who we don’t need to be connected to. Is life good in contrast to what you need in this moment in time? Yes, you likely have everything you could possibly need to get to the next step/level in your life and actually thrive. Without the fear of missing out, or trying to keep up with he who is next door. We likely feel more free to make mistakes, and take things slower. Taking things in a slower manner actually makes things go faster, because when we take life slowly it’s more fluid. If we find ourselves constantly pushing against doors that aren’t supposed to open for us, or trying to be better just to keep up with who ever is out there in the world, we lose our foothold and slip. As to progress it is up to us to focus on what we can do on a day to day basis. Though, social media also has advantageous sides to it. We have access to information even if we are cut off. We can learn from a distance focus on inner growth, tend to our wounds and pains from the battlefield. We have time to ponder what exactly will be our next step. We get to prepare, as well as tweak and take a step back from activities we’d be far too involved with if living in environments where the busy pace of life takes over our mind process. It gives us access to specific information. It opens doors to knowledge we would have not had access to otherwise. It gives us opportunities to see what is right and what is wrong in the world as well as synchronise our out of date beliefs and then bring back our perspective to ourselves and see what we think is right or wrong. With so many successful ways to achieve results being exposed to everyone, Is it time to focus on more down to earth qualities such as handmade personalised value? Or do we really need to do anything at all?
What you Need to Know about Social Media
On the one side, being exposed to all things all the time is an amazing source of development, we get to see what we are and by what we are interested.
In other circumstances, we’d have no idea that some things exist. This is a good thing. People also get to exchange and evolve no matter where they are which is helpful.
Discovering many amazing new things, not “feeling” as isolated than as if we had been alone and cut off in a cave the entire time.
It brings great competitivity and progress which comes with competition.
Though on the other, the downsides are felt in part due to the depth at which we are isolated or how “mainstream” we are. And also in part, to one’s degree of confidence or lack there of.
Comparing, which leads us to feeling lesser, unworthy or even unable to live up to “the standard” is a source of pain.
We can never keep up and this turns out to be draining.
No matter how much we share with others, we get nothing in return except confirmation about what we already know. “I’m great”, “I’m powerful”, “I’m rich”, “I’m pretty”… which are vanity criteria based on what we already know.
It also confirms that people who have more financial freedom will be able to show off more, or those who have a standard of beauty which appeals to the masses will be put on a pedestal and valued higher than anyone who is “different” in any way possible.
In a way, its back to high school with the rich kid/poor kid/ Confident kid/Unconfident kid again…
This sense of high school 2.0 is very unproductive for anyone who is observing. Also vain and an empty pursuit due to the fact that it promotes “The popular kids”. It really goes to show the reality of “wanting to fit in”. By wanting to fit in, you naturally aspire to be a product of mass consumption, a product of mass exposure.
Social media also gives the illusion that one is or isn’t necessarily liked based on superficiality.
This is a faulty parameter which cannot give precise and correct results. It bases everything on the Golden Circle but inside out.
Starting with What then how then why. This cannot work; as human beings we function from the inside out, not the outside in.
In terms of effects on our psyche and our time, it is an abomination. Our minds and nervous systems have become overstimulated and over saturated with information that we don’t necessarily need, want or even Should have in the first place.
Over 200 years ago, someones entire lifespan wouldn’t have even half of what we are exposed to in a single day. Imagine what our minds are capable of and what our mental limits are.
Faster, more, better, NOW!
Though, through fomo and needing to know what the “next thing is “social media has exposed us to an attachment to our devices. We needn’t fear governments putting Chips in us to see where we are. We are already here, our information is passed everywhere, all the time, to limits far outside of our reach.
Our minds are saturated, which means are nervous systems are saturated and this is a clear indicator that we need to let go of all outside stimulation, especially devices, screens, and anything which has power.
We are “PUSHING” ourselves to imbibe information which has nothing to do with us. We are exposed to too much information. None which serves us correctly for what is in front of us in actuality.
When traveling in another country, I have found that being confronted to constant New information, my mind is thrilled, though my body has no time to rest as it is constantly adapting to the upcoming change of scenery and people.
The same is valuable for our brains and nervous systems in front of screens. Day in and day out we are exposed to more and more information which never lets us correctly relax and heal our over stimulated sensors. This can be damaging.
The standards around us have risen above what is humanly possible to upkeep. Over consumption has taken part so much that the world and its natural resources are collapsing. The Ice caps Are melting. Our water is filled with plastic. Governments are actually putting nuclear waste into the sea.
Corporations, making mass profit are pushing their agenda onto us based on our social media usage, what we read, what we look at etc. Everything around us has become a product to sell. Everything we see is for sale. Our lives have become studies like labrats for usage and profit.
We are exposed to cultures and trends that have nothing to do with us. We are born in specific parts of the world and for good reason. While growing up in specific places, we have grown to understand and perceive the world around us. The world we see and have action over is what is in front of us, not what is happening half way around the world. This is a disruption in our ways of functioning and takes away our roots, our individuality and unifies everyone with the same styles, trends and exposure which otherwise wouldn’t exist. For example: I used to meet people and observe how they spoke, their linguistic rhythms and their mannerisms. Though everyone is now exposed to the same people. This makes everyone into a clone of someone else and empowers those who have more exposure and who have trend influence.
Everything you say and do, there is proof to keep you “consistent”. Though as human beings, we are changeable, we are evolving all the time, we make mistakes, we grow, we change… If there is proof of a mistake, you never get to move on, you never get to change, nor do you ever get to be free from something that hasn’t existed for maybe 15 or 20 years.
Cherokee.blog 