Unleash the Real, Raw, Uncensored You Series

We spend a lot of our time getting to know others, whether it’s someone we fancy, a hero we worship, or a character who’s the talk of the town. However, we don’t often examine ourselves. A journey of self-discovery is also one of self-enquiry, so the more information we gather on ourselves, the better.

How to Access Deep Work to Give Your Life Meaning

But then I started to think about my biases about men and cats. After all, Vito Corleone, the Mafia boss of bosses in “The Godfather,” had a cat. Winston Churchill had many cats. My all-time hero, Hemingway, had a soft spot for cats and had many in his several homes. I found out that some of my other favourite writers—Charles Bukowski, Mark Twain, Annie Dillard—also liked cats.

Fast-forward a few years. After reading a few classics (As a Man Thinketh, by James Allen; Napoleon Hill’s Think and Grow Rich; Ask and It’s Given, by Esther and Jerry Hicks) I began to better understand how the laws of the universe really work.

Getting up early is natural. What is unnatural is to live like a bat, staying up late at night and getting up around noon. The whole process of creating a wonderful morning might take up to a couple of hours, but then we’ve set ourselves up for a wonderful day, which can snowball into a good life.

In Steven Pressfield’s bestseller, The War of Art, he calls this the “resistance.” Pressfield argues that the primary enemy of creativity is “resistance,” an unconscious part of us that acts against our conscious desires and sabotages our work. He further explains that resistance is the most toxic force on the planet. It arises from within and takes the shape of procrastination, lack of motivation, insecurities, self-doubt, and fear.

But it’s been challenging. I’ve slept badly because of the pain. I’ve felt worthless, needing help all the time. Worst of all, in losing the rigidity and consistency of my morning rituals and daily exercise, I’ve lost the bridge to my soul and the energy that it provides me.

A few years ago, my company’s sales dropped drastically. That prompted me to take action, which I’m still in the midst of today. I took a deeper look at our products, people, and marketing strategy. I found that many products, people and strategies were not serving us. I made tough calls and changed a lot from the inside. We haven’t yet reaped the full dividend, but I feel that we are now on the right track to success.

In one of my earlier blog posts, I discussed the power of reading and its positive effect on my life. In the past ten years, books have dominated my life. Some have revolutionised my thinking, while others have made it easier for me to traverse the vicissitudes of life.

I believe talk of finding our purpose or “why” has been overblown and overused in recent times. Many of us end up feeling obligated, overwhelmed, and anxious when we start trying to find it. Ultimately, it can be quite paralysing—particularly for young adults starting out in the world.

Gibran wrote in both Arabic and English, and his best work was produced in the era of the roaring twenties in New York City. He was influenced by the free thought and exuberance of that time, and he was regularly associated with W.B. Yeats, Carl Jung and Rodin. His seminal book, The Prophet, is amongst the best-selling books of all time—after The Bible and Shakespeare’s collections.

He introduced himself as Bernard Malm and he touched on the lessons he’d garnered from his favourite articles on my blog and how reading these gave him a new perspective on some of the activities he had previously viewed as mundane. He discussed some of the rituals and concepts that had fuelled him for the past few years and which he felt would bring some order into his life. My response to his email sparked a follow-up interview to discuss the points he’d shared. It was a scintillating meeting which I drew a lot of inspiration from.

We have a habit of defaulting into “comfortable thinking,” whereby we only think how we are used to thinking. We only see what we try to see. We only hear what we want to hear.  When we are focused on a thought, say buying a VW Beetle car, then all of a sudden every car we see is a VW Beetle.

Positive Psychology defines a happy person as someone who experiences more positive emotions such as joy, passion and pride and less negative emotions such as sadness, anxiety and anger.

For the past week, it’s been up and down. One day, I’m optimistic. I think about how 14 days have passed and I’ve only got 32 left in plaster. But on other days, I look with envy at those who walk freely. I feel enraged that this all had to happen at the start of the year, when I had so many plans to kickstart further growth.

Why Systems are the New Goals

How to Reinvent and Realign our Lives

I’m with my journal, facing an obscured sun and reflecting on the past 12 months. I’ve been doing this intentional practice for the past seven years now, and it has proved invaluable for me in clarifying what has worked, what hasn’t and what has left an imprint on me each year.

He went on to describe that though putting on socks and shoes correctly and meticulously was a small act, it both prevented many injuries on the hard basketball floor and taught players the discipline and power of doing things correctly, small or big.