Mood follows action, not the other way around.
After spending much of the day lying around(The Witcher 3 is addictive) and watching Netflix, I spent the last two hours making good on my promises of the day. Although I was in the mood to do nothing, having habits made sure that the entire day wasn’t wasted.
Not a long post, but certainly an important one. It stands as a great reminder of habits, and a great way to end my month, especially compared to the first Sunday.
Are we all brainwashed?
When was the last time you questioned something?
What was the result?
Why Do We Haunt Ourselves and How Do We Push Forward
It’s late in the day, we are sitting at our desks, paralyzed with fear. It is nearing 3:30 — and you are currently fighting a war with yourself on moving forward with your work — the big picture stuff, the year end goal, the thing that makes your eyes light up when you are in that state of flow.
A ping comes from your left- and an email arrives – it becomes your salvation, because now you have “something to do” — and something that looks very busy, so the people around you know you are working.
While this is happening, you still can’t get rid of that sinking feeling you have, but, if only for a moment, it gets covered in the malaise of busy work.
Resistance has won — for another day.
We all have had days like that — and this week, I have found myself consumed with those thoughts, and it shows in my writing. The hard work is trying to fight that tide, when we are at our weakest, because that is when the Resistance is strongest.
It’s war is engaged on many fronts, and it tactics can range from “just take 5 minutes and read this update” to “OMG HOW CAN WE WORK WITHOUT COFFEE”. However, its best tactics focus on sapping your priorities and making you think about perfection.
Now — put yourself back at that desk. Do you feel it creeping up on you, pushing you away from the big project, towards that email, that text message, that phone call? Now that it has a name to you, do you understand how much it can ruin your long term vision?
Here is the bad news — there is no killing it. It’s as a part of you as your fingers and toes.
The best defense — I have found, is to know it, make peace with it, understand it, and just step over it. It is best done with process and habit. If you know what to do next, if you ingrain it into your day, you know exactly what your next move is.
This Sunday morning, I had a huge fight with it, laying in bed watching myself look at the making of SportCenter. I don’t even watch ESPN. All this is happening in my head as my eyes glaze over in bed, looking at the new Social Media capabilities of the new studio. I couldn’t believe I was “fascinated” by the speed they plan on getting tweets you wrote back out to you.
After the video was over, I took a breath, realized what was happening, and got up for my morning workout — just one of the three things I have to do in the morning. Something as simple as just touching my toes snapped me back into the habit and started my morning correctly.
If I had no habits — I still might be in bed figuring out just how deep ESPN’s integration with Facebook goes.
This works the other way as well — finishing what you start is a daunting process. Who knows how receptive people are going to be when you finish it. That person sitting there sweating at 3:30 is closer to pushing send — closer to shipping, and his fear is keeping him buttoned up.
Perfection is one of the greatest tactics resistance has. If we just get one more feature, if we just find one more bug, if we just do one more test, then maybe the people will shower the product, the PowerPoint, the corporate vision with praise — and if it all goes bad they will have the paperwork for you to CYA.
Your process has to be able to handle putting stuff out there, pick a date. Ship. You always have a chance to make something better, and you will learn something along the way. Perfection be damned.
When I was a kid, I hated normal and learned a lot. When I was a teen I hated normal and learned a lot. Around college — I hated normal, but somewhere along the way as an adult, I started to settle. I want to get back to that.
It boils down to you deciding — each day, each decision — do I want to have an adventure — to see something new, to push myself to go to where no one has been before.
Ask yourself — do I want an Adventure — or do I want normal?
*Originally wrote on Medium – check out more posts here *
Reflection is powerful.
It is our power to sit back, and look at the mistakes we made in our lives.
Reassess our movements thoughts and actions and provide ourselves a better way to move forward. Most animals have a visceral reaction to things when they make a mistake – fear,anger, etc. and are stuck with that feeling with no explanation of why.
Our power of reflection allows up to know why, and it is also powerful enough to let us know if the reason made sense in the first place.
Internally, self promotion feels like a scam.
Our self esteem comes into play for this. Self Impostor syndrom seems to run rampant.
How do they think I am ______ don’t they know I am only me?
We then look at others that are at our level – or around us and see them doing it. We take the impostor syndrome and use that inward anger outward.
”________ is such a phony – always on Facebook and Twitter acting like they are successful”
The problem is that with that you cast away your own successes. No one is going to treat you like a professional if you don’t treat your self like one.
In short – “keeping it real” is a great way to keep yourself in a cubicle.
Further Reading
Sunday mornings seem like they are great for reflection.
I guess that is why most businesses are closed, Christians celebrate religious services, school is out, work slows down, and we all get to sit down and bask in the glory of the day.
Sunday always meant church for me, which meant work, which meant appearances, which means I hated Sundays for most my life. I had to get up, put on a suit, brush my teeth, cross my t’s and dot my i’s to make sure I looked good, because the family would be going to church.
This was a good and bad thing. I learned about appearances, and how important they were to keep. We had to make a show of it, because the people were expecting a show. To not make a show, at least a little bit, was to make you an outcast. There would be gossip, and shunning, even at tiny levels.
The bad was I learned more about human nature. A place that said it was inclusive and forgiving, really wasn’t. The gossip flew – “Did you see what that family wore” even as the Bible said come as you are. People would be judged – “I saw ___ boy at the liquor store” even as the bible said judge lest ye be judged.
I soaked a lot of this in, because I was a quiet observer. Slowly, I let it chip away at my feelings towards religion as a whole. I became an agnostic while spending 3 days a week at a holy building. I knew the bible, but what I saw just wasn’t matching up.
I think back and feel like I shouldn’t have let that happen sometimes. Maybe the key to all of it was forgiveness for your fellow man. Jesus was a strong person, and if a lot of that was true (minus the magic) then he was a great man who had a great capacity for compassion, even if his followers didn’t.
But I also think maybe the lesson was to forge out ahead, and be your own man. Look and see what group think brings to you, look what it makes you. Sometimes, when you are a part of the group you can’t just be honest. The story changes. A charade has to happen because if it doesn’t the whole thing falls apart.
As a comedian I would like to be able to change minds while making people laugh. I think an artists most noble mission is to take shots at the status quo, to show the world how it is, to break the charade – wrapped in a bouquet of beauty.
I want to break that charade without breaking the people behind it. As this Sunday rolls on, it becomes another week where this sits in the back of my mind, and allows me to push forward.
Movie Day is today. I have been picking out Sunday to go to see a film since the beginning of the month, and I think i will stick with this routine.
It is pretty nice to be able to unplug yourself, and surrender to something for 2 hours, without checking your phone, or looking at Twitter, Facebook, or even talking.
Its why I go alone. I want the time to let my brain sit on whatever it is processing at the time. If nothing comes, fine, but I want to train it to have Sunday be a time of silence.
The movie thing also helps because it allows me to see other people’s ideas, good or bad. I get to see show business from the consumers point of view. I can learn more on what makes a good movie, what makes a good story, or even, why did this thing go so wrong. Then I can use what I learned to improve my own work.
I’d like to learn how to tell a story, and this is the first step in making that happen.
I need to fill up my calendar more. It has always been a tool I neglect, even at work, where everyone lives by the calendar. People use it to watch meeting invitations, and the assumption is that you are busy if anything is on your calendar.
I have been taking that opportunity to block out 30 minutes a day in order to go over my comedy sets. It has generally worked. I want to use it now to
1) give myself time on Monday mornings to plan out my week as per 99u’s Managing Your Day to Day.
2) Organize my personal life in order to remember shows and get an idea of how my month is going in terms of comedy.
I don’t quite know where it will lead. Maybe ill be in the same boat in September. But I hope it will give me inspiration to be a better worker at work, and power my comedy. Push me to more markets.
Social media curating is a thing. Its a very important thing. It is something I have failed to do, and as a creative who wants to be a freelance person in the future, it is something I better learn how to do.
I want to pick Sunday as a day to really get into my social media. I need to buffer statuses, build a Facebook following, and update my about.me enthuse linked.in and hoverboard.io pages, and connect everything so they can work as one well oiled machine.
I may even make a brand new comedy twitter handle because I need to separate personal and professional. I need to make everything squeaky clean so when the next step of my career comes, I can be ready.
I can’t just be lazy and try to blame fate. Be the change you want to be.
Distractions are the devil. I tried to read something today while some audio was playing and I lost track of everything I read. Whenever I work with silence, I learn just how much lyrics and talk can distract someone from getting meaningful work done.
I think I will be investing in noise cancellation headphones.
Do: Wrapup Pushups CPAP 3 things
Don’t: Meditation to-do water vegetable juice thank you 16/8
From the desk of Adam Thomas 