One of the side-effects of “you are the sum of the five people you surround yourself with the most” is catching the emotions of the other people around you. If everyone around you is frustrated or angry, you’ll tend to also feel angry. Or, at least agitated by the fact that everyone is angry around you. Even if one person near us happens to be angry, we tend to catch their anger like a bad cold. That’s right folks. Emotions are contagious. Emotions are contagious: Learn what science and research has to say about it – MSU Extension And if you are empathetic — meaning, you have a keen tune to other people’s emotions around you — you’re ever likely to catch something.

Now, this can be good and bad. Surround yourself with five negative, angry, or complaintive people, and you’ll have a hard time resisting the party (and if you do you’ll be exhausted from all the energy you burned attempting to). But surround yourself with energetic, vibrant, and people focused on possibility, you’ll start feeling that way too. I’ve got a friend, let’s call him Steve Pumpernickel. Every time Steve and I meet up, he’s practically bouncing off the ceiling with energy. And I love it. I want to absorb it via osmosis. (Too weird?) That’s not the reason I hang out with him, but it’s certainly a reason why I want to hang out with him more.

There’s often a lot we want out of life. Dreams and desires, skills and traits we’d like to create. And sometimes it feels like no matter what we do, we just can’t seem to get there. This is true. Doing is only half the job. The other half is who we surround ourselves with. We need a great team and community to elevate us (and them) to the next level (whatever that is). Surround yourself with great people doing great things, and you too will also do great things.

How?

Join a club

Start a podcast

Check out local events and meetups.

Gain insights through the influence of others — books, podcasts, videos, courses, etc

Focus less on spending the least amount of time with negative people, focus more on spending as much time with great people.

STAY BOLD, Keep Pursuing — Josh Waggoner | Daily Blog #1444 (draft 2)

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“Your best chance to grow us to do something you don’t know how to do.” — Michael Bierut

How many times has “I don’t know how” stop someone from creating something new or doing something they want to do?

*‘How’* trips early and it trips often.

“I’d love to be a photographer, but I don’t know how.”

‘How’ is also wears many disguises:

“I don’t know enough yet. I’ll start when _.”

“I’d love to, but I don’t have a lot of time between the full-time job and my other blah blah.”

“I know how, but I don’t have enough money, y z…” (False illusions of how.)

And the many faces of fear, of course.

I’ve battled ‘how’ over the years myself. I’ll apply to that job when I’m better at what I do. I’ll write a novel when I know how to build characters and great dialogue.” On and on it goes — letting not knowing ‘how’ dictate my life. I’ve come to the conclusion that knowing ‘how’ is just a distraction (and a justification not to start). The people that know ‘how’ are the ones who’ve already done the work themselves. Knowing how comes from doing.

‘How is a bi-product of action’. Do something enough and you’ll figure out how soon enough.

Sure, if you want to scuba-dive, it might be smart to learn how first before you try. Faking it only works for so long.

Sometimes the how is part of the doing. The scuba-diver instructor isn’t just going to teach you on land and that’s that. No, they will expect you to try it after the lesson. You are learning by doing.

“For the things we have to learn before we can do them, we learn by doing them.” —Aristotle

Doing is another form of learning. It’s learning on wheels. You’re moving and learning as you go— slow and unsteady but moving nonetheless.

There will be trial and error, but there’s always trail and error — that’s part of the journey.

“The best way to learn a thing was to do it, he had found; sails or scrolls, it made no matter. — George R.R. Martin

‘How’ also comes from joy. When you enjoy doing something, how (and how to do it better) will come the more you do it.

There’s a phenomenon, named the Hawthorne effect, that says we tend to modify our behavior when we know we are being observed.

Personally, I’ve experienced this to be true. I’m much more likely to keep a habit, such as sticking to healthy food, when I know friends are watching (especially when those friends are super healthy themselves.)

You also see this everywhere online and on social media. Online, anonymity can (not always) allow one to vent their discontentment through negativity and ugliness. On social apps like Instagram, people (including myself) naturally want to curate their lives into a perfect collage of photos and funny videos.

But what about when we are observing our own behaviors?

One of the strongest benefits of having a daily ‘observational’ habit — journaling, blogging, vlogging, podcasting — is being able to look at your life daily with a perspective eye.

Instead of mindlessly channel-surfing / scrolling through life, you become much more aware of who you are and more in tune with what you want out of life.

Daily blogging has been a big fat magnifying glass to my thoughts and beliefs. And, more importantly, it’s an immediate feedback loop for what I need to improve and work harder on. Instead of blaming life (and everything under the sun except myself) for my problems and shortcomings, I can immediately see what’s working or not working and act on it.

Observing yourself gives you no excuses not to improve.

What am I doing that’s interesting?

What do I spend my time on?

How am I pushing yourself and my abilities to new heights?

Why am I doing what you’re doing?

And why am I doing it this why?

Questions like these intuitively pop up in your mind. Patterns emerge. Things you like, things you dislike. Instead of just going through the motions of life, you can see and then experiment your way towards a desirable outcome.

It’s difficult to change when you don’t know what you need to change.

I highly recommend starting a daily observational habit, even if it’s just for yourself.

“In all affairs it’s a healthy thing now and then to hang a question mark on the things you have long taken for granted.”

―Bertrand Russell

STAY BOLD, Keep Pursuing — Josh Waggoner | Daily Blog #1442 (draft 2)

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I think you have to be a little bit of an idiot with everything you are trying to learn.

Otherwise, you know too much and things can get daunting/overwhelming very quickly.

The original meaning of the French word naiveté (which I always forget how to spell) was being “innocent or natural”. Another way I would interpret ‘innocent’ or ‘natural’ would be ‘childlike’.

When you approach learning with a childlike quality, you are more likely to look past how difficult the journey to mastery will actually be. On the road to mastery, here ‘ther be many dragons. The iconic photojournalist Alfred Eisenstaedt) had a saying, “Once the amateur’s naive approach and humble willingness to learn fades away, the creative spirit of good photography dies with it. Every professional should remain always in his heart an amateur.” (He also said “keep it simple.” 🙂

We all need a little amateur’s naive spirit on our path towards learning. Too much and we might fall off a cliff’s edge we didn’t see coming, too little and we might be too smart for our own good to start.

“I have observed that the world has suffered far less from ignorance than from pretensions to knowledge. It is not skeptics or explorers but fanatics and ideologues who menace decency and progress.” — Daniel Boorstin, American Historian

An amateurs naivetè can give you superpowers:

• The ability to ask dumb questions without knowing or caring that they are dumb.

• Endless curiosity — the ability to ask a million questions and only stop because it’s bedtime.

• Fearless — the ability to start things, without the fear that starting new things usually brings.

• A wild imagination — When everything is unknown, everything is possible.

• The ability to fail towards success — sometimes without even knowing your ‘failing’.

• And the ability to look stupid and not care.

If you can tackle any endeavor with an amateurs heart AND the wisdom to be aware of and avoid pitfalls, you just might become one the best at what you love to do.

STAY BOLD, Keep Pursuing — Josh Waggoner | Daily Blog #1441 (draft 2)

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“I hated every minute of training, but I said, ‘Don’t quit. Suffer now and live the rest of your life as a champion.’”

Muhammad Ali

Creating is hard. Everything that can get in the way of working on your craft, will.

But that’s part of it. The creative process is not just our ideas or imagination — it’s acting on our ideas despite life pulling at us from multiple angles, and despite the bad cold we’re getting over, or the break up we are dealing with. Or in other words—

The things that challenge our ability and willingness to create, is a component of the creativity as well.

It’s all apart of the process.

STAY BOLD, Keep Pursuing — Josh Waggoner | Daily Blog #1440 (draft 2)

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Pretty much everything worthwhile is harder than it looks. Difficulty is like the college “weed out class” for life. If you back an idea or pursuit with weak motivations, then what’s going to stop you from quitting immediately when things get hard?

“I want to get fit and lean” works, until you accidentally eat gluten and then impulsive steer that derailed train all the way to the ice cream shop and never look back. Our motivations need to be strong and personal.

To be able continue when things suck day after day takes clear vision of what you’re after and why.

Starting a business to make money doesn’t compare to starting a business to pay your kids way through college.

Strong motivations are the fire that pushes you to want it so badly you’re willing to take action on it every day.

STAY BOLD, Keep Pursuing — Josh Waggoner | Daily Blog #1439 (draft 2)

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We need space to create.

Cramming your life full of activity and todos leaves yourself unavailable for creativity (or at least the creative potential you could generate).

My best work comes from a place of stillness, where there’s nothing required of me to do, except what is in front of me. Sometimes that nothing space needs to be scheduled and placed in the midst of a hectic day. But from adding in that space breathed new life to your creativity.

In order to create — whatever that means to you — we must be available and open for business. Ideas come from anywhere and everywhere, so we need to be tuned in to that channel and have the space available to express it.

Often, that means having time to just mess around and play.

How we express our ideas is based on what we want to do and who we are. For you, that might mean writing or dancing. For another, that might mean rapping or giving a speech. There’s no right way, of course. That would be too easy.

‘But I don’t have any good ideas’

Are you open to them?

Are you giving enough time and space to listen to them?

Take more breaks. Schedule create time. Consider the spaces with the spaces of your life.

Give to the art of creativity what it needs to thrive, and it will give back in return.

STAY BOLD, Keep Pursuing — Josh Waggoner | Daily Blog #1438 (draft 2)

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Life comes in waves.

Days come and go. Moments of happiness come and go.

Pain — and It’s close friends Fear, Failure, and Struggle — strike our shore unannounced, and wash away the castles we build on our expectations and perspectives we want from life.

In hindsight, we could see them coming from miles out, but we didn’t know what we were looking at. But that also means we can train ourselves to spot opportunities and pitfalls beforehand, so we can be ready when they arrive.

Knowing that life moves in waves highlight an interesting question: Is the unexpected really unexpected?

The unexpected is not just probable, it’s inevitable. I don’t mean to say that negative outcomes are always inevitable, or positive outcomes are assured. The best answer I can come up with for the question “will this be good or bad for me?” is “yes”. Positive outcomes don’t always mean good, nor do negative outcomes mean bad. Which, is a confusing way to say that everything that happens to us can be a lesson we can use (if we can take a breath and see it that way) and that luck has a hand in our successes as much as we do.

It’s good to remember that brilliant people older than us were once teenagers like we were (are) and that everyone is figuring life out as we go, using the knowledge and tools (or lack thereof) we have to work with.

At any given moment, we are working with limited knowledge. It’s beneficial (downright vital) to know yourself, as well as surround yourself with wise advisors who have walked the walk and been where you’ve been. The more we know about ourselves and what we want in life, and the more we surround ourselves with friends, books (resources), advisors, and mentors who want to see us thrive, the better we will be able to handle the unexpected.

So when the happy waves come, we’ll be ready to take advantage of them.

And when the struggle waves hit, we’ll be ready to take advantage of them too.

STAY BOLD, Keep Pursuing — Josh Waggoner | Daily Blog #1437 (draft 2)

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“You never know how strong you are, until being strong is your only choice.” — Bob Marley

“Life is a series of natural and spontaneous changes. Don’t resist them – that only creates sorrow. Let reality be reality. Let things flow naturally forward in whatever way they like. — Lao Tzu

It’s so easy for me to get stuck on all things I don’t have, and ignore all the things that I do have. Perhaps you can relate.

If I’m honest with myself, ninety percent of my problems only happen in my mind.

And the real problems that I do have, are only amplified by my current mindset.

Everything that try to hold us back, actually pushes us forward.

Pain forces change.

STAY BOLD, Keep Pursuing — Josh Waggoner | Daily Blog #1436 (draft 2)

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“We have learned how to do a lot of things. We must try to relearn why.” — Flora Lewis

One important aspect of learning is relearning. Refreshing your skills, even going back and studying the fundamentals, is an important part in improving your skills and taking things to the next level.

When you started, you were a different person than you are now. But as you improve, you gain clarity and strength in your skills. Things might have seemed new, challenging and Perhaps even a little hard to fully grasp. You’ve changed. You’ve improved, however so slightly that may be. Relearning allows you to go deeper. Relearning the fundamentals allows you to solidify your foundational knowledge and go beyond your current level of skill.

By re-approaching the basics—or what you (think you) know—you can compare your more developed mind and skill to where you started with a different perspective.

Perspective is everything, and will improve your skills even more. Of course you don’t want to let your relearning distract you from taking action.

The goal is to remind yourself:

• where you started and how much you’ve learned.

• see what gaps you’ve been overlooking.

• why you decided to learn it in the first place.

STAY BOLD, Keep Pursuing — Josh Waggoner | Daily Blog #1435 (draft 2)

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