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Not everyone will understand your journey. That’s fine. It’s not their journey to make sense of. It’s yours.

Zero Dean

Author | Photographer | CG Artist | Filmmaker

Taking action

“I shouldn’t…”

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“I shouldn’t…”

  • I shouldn’t talk to that person because I don’t want to bother them.
  • I shouldn’t ask anyone for help because it makes me seem needy.
  • I shouldn’t feel proud of my accomplishments because I haven’t done anything original or noteworthy.
  • I shouldn’t draw attention to myself because I don’t deserve it.
  • I shouldn’t contribute to a conversation because I might say something wrong.
  • I shouldn’t express my affection for someone because it probably won’t be reciprocated.
  • I shouldn’t show vulnerability because it will make me appear weak.
  • I shouldn’t offer advice because I don’t have a degree in the subject.
  • I shouldn’t express my opinions because someone may disagree.
  • I shouldn’t act a certain way because it isn’t considered adult behavior.
  • I shouldn’t stick my neck out because I might get my head chopped off.
  • I shouldn’t use profanity because it might offend someone.
  • I shouldn’t try to help people because my own life isn’t exactly where I want it to be.
  • I shouldn’t even try because it probably won’t work or turn out the way I want it to.
  • I shouldn’t publish a post or piece of art until it’s perfect — and it never is.

And that’s just me.

If I listened to everything I told myself I shouldn’t do, I wouldn’t ever do anything worth doing.

Sometimes you just have to tell the voice in your head to SHUSH! And then remind yourself that if it turns out that whatever you want to do is a mistake, you’ll learn from it.

[ DISCLAIMER: I am not recommending law breaking, bad, abusive, or negative behavior. Please use common sense. ]

Everyone feels anxiety at times. Everyone gets nervous. Everyone occasionally wonders if what they want to do will be a mistake.

And that’s ok, but you don’t ever let that stop you from living your life on your terms. Who are you living your life for anyway? You — or everyone else on the planet?

Live. Try stuff. Make mistakes. Learn. Improve. Repeat.

Because being afraid of doing something you truly want to do isn’t a good enough reason not to do it.

“Live life fully while you’re here. Experience everything. Take care of yourself and your friends. Have fun, be crazy, be weird. Go out and screw up! You’re going to anyway, so you might as well enjoy the process. Take the opportunity to learn from your mistakes: find the cause of your problem and eliminate it. Don’t try to be perfect; just be an excellent example of being human.” — Anthony Robbins

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Saving the Planet

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“Use the hashtag SaveThePlanet to help save the planet!”

OMG you guys! Who knew that saving the planet was so easy!?

Why aren’t you doing this, guys!?

Guys? Guys? Guys? The planet!

We gotta save the planet!

Use the hashtag, guys!

Save the planet! Save the planet!

SaveTheDamnPlanet!

*Pretty sure likes and hashtags are going to have no noticeable impact on the planet. All that relying on them does is give someone the false belief they’ve actually done something.

“Welp, I used the hashtag SaveThePlanet today. I’ve done my part! Looks like my job here is done.”

This isn’t activism.

If you want to make a difference, develop good habits that represent your beliefs, be thoughtful of your environment, educate yourself on the cause(s) you wish to support, help educate others if you so desire, and take action to support those causes.

If it feels a little too easy and like you didn’t actually do anything, you probably didn’t.

Take action. Be the change.

Don’t rely on likes and hashtags to do it for you.

 

Doing it “wrong” and doing it anyway

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Make a donation to a charity? Someone will tell you it’s the wrong charity.
Give to the homeless? Someone will tell you why that’s a bad idea.
Like a certain kind of music? Someone will tell you why it sucks.
Read a good book lately? Someone out there hates it.
Think something is funny? Someone won’t see the humor.
Have something cool you want to attempt? Someone will tell you not to bother because it’s already been done.

George Lucas, JK Rowling, The Beatles, and countless other success stories — all got rejected because someone thought there was something “wrong” with what they had to offer, but they all succeeded because they persisted anyway.

It should go without saying that no matter what you do or what your motivation is for doing it, there will almost always be someone to tell you that you’re doing it wrong.

At some point, you just have to learn to listen to your heart and your intuition and do what you feel is right, regardless of what the critics say. Because sometimes what’s considered wrong or flawed to one person, may be a work of genius to another.

Use feedback to make yourself, your actions, and your offerings more effective, but never give up doing what you want to do just because someone doesn’t “get it”.

Odds are, if you do anything worth doing and it initiates change for the greater good, someone somewhere isn’t going to like it.

Do it anyway.

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The master of your destiny

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People often know exactly what they need to do to get the results they want, but fail to start because they don’t want to put in the work or subject themselves to the discomfort necessary to get from where they are to where they want to be.

Don’t fall victim to your brain telling you that it doesn’t want to do something — that could benefit you or others — because it is challenging or uncomfortable.

Most things you think are difficult to do at the beginning get easier with repetition. Not because the task gets easier, but because you get better at it. Stronger.

Every challenge you face and overcome today helps provide you with the strength & knowledge necessary to overcome the challenges you face tomorrow.

You have it within you to be the master of your destiny by resolving to bravely face the challenges necessary to get the positive results you want in life.

But you must stop trying to cheat your way through life by looking — or waiting indefinitely — for the magic pill or shortcut that never comes.

Do what is necessary to get the results you desire, and the discomfort you feel at the beginning of your journey will greatly diminish — or go away completely — if you commit yourself to getting through it without giving up.

Don’t sacrifice the kind of life and health you truly desire by catering to your short-term comfort over your long-term goals.

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Life experience has finished installing important updates…

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Life experience has finished installing important updates providing you with the ability to improve your life, but your life will not change without taking action.

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Originally published on: Jun 12, 2014 @ 15:26
Republished on: May 23, 2015 @ 13:26

Level of difficulty

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Every time you say something is hard or difficult for you, you reinforce in your mind how difficult it is, and you actually make it harder and more difficult (according to your belief) than it needs to be.

The fact is, most things we do are difficult before they get easier. Everything from walking to talking to writing or typing was difficult at one point.

Rather than focus on how difficult something is, always focus on your progress and how far you’ve come, not on how far you have to go.

Because no matter how slow you go, as long as you are consistent in your efforts (and you are biologically capable), you will achieve what it is you set out to accomplish.

And what you once considered difficult, no longer will be.

But only if you get started and only if you don’t give up.

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Expiration date

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“To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.” — Oscar Wilde

Are there things you want to do in life? Fears you want to overcome?

Would it change your approach knowing you only had a year to live?

We may not ever know our exact expiration date, but we all have one. And for some of us, it’s closer than we think. This isn’t a pessimistic way of looking at things, it’s a fact. But it’s something we often choose to ignore until it’s too late.

If you truly intend to live life to the fullest , I think it’s vitally important to remind yourself every once in a while — if not daily — that you’re dying.

It may not be the sort of thing you generally find yourself wanting to think about, but by refusing to face this fact, we run the risk of wasting enormous amounts of time getting caught up in things that ultimately provide us with very little value or substance in our lives.

There are more things to do and places to see in the world than any single person could possibly do in a lifetime. So already, our lives and what we choose to experience is a compromise.

A typical lifetime may seem like a lot of time, but time passes faster than one thinks. Adding to this is the fact that we are only teenagers briefly. We will only be in our 20’s once. Our 30’s once. Our 40’s and so on, ONCE.

To think you have time to put everything off to see and do and appreciate until later in life is an illusion.

And then there’s the fact that we only get one body. And it has to last a lifetime. If that’s not an incentive to stay healthy and treat your body well, I don’t know what is. But hey, if you’re not fit or healthy, it’s not too late to try to be.

We get a brain, which we can fill with any number of amazing facts and memories of real-life experiences and not just what we watched on TV. But the brain is like a muscle, the less we use it, the less efficient it becomes.

The fact is, every single day that passes is a day of our life we are trading for it. And we’ll never get it back. You can never get more time, you can only manage it more effectively by living with intention.

This is not to suggest that anyone should act irresponsibly, spend money they don’t have, or live with reckless abandon.

Reminding yourself that every day has value and every day that passes is another day closer to your expiration date can provide the perspective & motivation necessary to help you prioritize your life in a way that reflects the kind of person you truly want to be.

“Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything – all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure – these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.” — Steve Jobs

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“Well, I tried.”

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“Well, I tried.”

Yes, today you tried. But what about tomorrow, or the day after that, or the day after that?

The fact is, in the game of life, you don’t always get another chance, but in those times when you do, why wouldn’t you take it?

Success, more often than not, is built upon a foundation of failure.

If you tried and failed, the answer isn’t to stop trying. The answer is — in many cases — to keep trying different things until you succeed. Especially in those things that matter to you the most.

“Success is 99 percent failure.” — Soichiro Honda

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