I got set off the other day. My phone was stolen. My crappy iPhone 5s phone – like 3 years old. Stolen. Some idiot at the basketball courts thought it was the new iPhone 6SE (because Apple thought it was a great idea to make phones big, then even bigger, before making them small again after realizing no one wants a phone that’s the size of their quad), so they dug around in my bag, grabbed it and peaced out. So they stole my phone – I don’t ...
Want To Be A __ Person? Do More Things That Type of Person Would Do
I was sitting on the couch the other day - not doing something anything particularly inspiring and I thought out loud: This feels really lazy right now. When I looked at the list of things that I aspire to be - lazy is not one of them. But there on the couch, I felt sluggish. I could just stay here - it's easier to not move than it is to change something. So I started to go through the list of things that I wanted to do: I want to get my ...
Internal vs. External? A Quick Practice To Become More Resilient
Here's a simple practice you can do the next time you try to do something impossible and come up against an insurmountable obstacle. Ask yourself 1 question: Is the struggle internal or external? What I mean by that is that anytime you run into a problem, there are 2 ways to react. You can talk about what's happening with your surroundings and your environment, or you can talk about what's going on with you. What's causing me to feel like ...
Be Honest: It’s Not THAT Important To You
You know that thing on your list that's been there since September? The one you keep planning on doing when the time is right? Today is the day. Today's the day it gets moved off the list. Let's face it. It's not that important to you. If it was, it would have been done in September (or whenever you first put it on the list). If it was important (or is important), then this is the kick in the butt that you need to get it done. If ...
Recalculating
Recalculating A few weeks back, I went on a trip to LA a few weeks back with my best friend. We threw our destination address into Google Maps and started following the directions for another adventure. At one point, we missed a turn and our Google Maps monotone navigator got to announce somewhat passive aggressively, “recalculating.” Somewhat subtlety indicating that we had missed one of our turn-off points. We had missed the mark, but ...
Why The 10% of Your Brain Myth Is Probably A Little Bit True
I ran across this quote by Muhammad Ali the other day: You can hear Arnold Schwarzenegger quote him in this video, which is well worth watching if you have time: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EyhOmBPtGNM One of the things that always amazes me about the human body and mind is their ability to keep going. Despite what your mind tells you, you almost always have more left to give. The 10% Myth There's a myth that you only use 10% of your brain. ...
A Few Updates on Cold Shower Therapy™
Cold Shower Therapy™ (daily five minute cold showers) has become one of the most interesting things I've talked about since starting IMPOSSIBLE. I've received more stories and more hate mail about this one concept than about almost anything else I've written. Here's the premise of CST: If you can’t do something uncomfortable and difficult for five minutes in the shower, how the hell are you going to do something uncomfortable or difficult in real ...
(Yet)
Every time you do something impossible, a little voice in the back of your head pipes up. Sometimes the voice is loud. Sometimes it's soft. But it's always there. I'm not fast enough to run an ultra marathon. I don't have the kind of body you need to get abs or lose weight. I don't have rich parents, so I can't start my own venture-backed company. I'm too tall, too short, too skinny, too fat. Whichever reasons it gives, the voice is always ...
Shut Up And Run
This was one of the posts that I ingrained into my head while running Comrades marathon and one of the mantras I kept in mind throughout the whole course. The post is originally at "Also Ran Runners." Many thanks to them for allowing me to repost this. The most important thing about running is running! “Shut up and run” is the answer to just about any running woe you may encounter. This is as much a part of your mental preparation as it is a part of your ...
Batch Tasking: How To Create Incredible Amounts of Content Like Clockwork
The greats weren't great because at birth they could paint / The greats were great cause they paint a lot - Macklemore & Ryan Lewis, 10,000 hours I like to think that I get a lot done. I'm working on getting a lot more done. I believe that the more you do and the faster that you execute, the faster you'll improve. In other words, I believe that if you're prolific, you produce quality work much faster than if you try to be perfect. Why? The ...