“Repetition is an endless feature of the human environment. Like melodic consonance and fervent discord in music, repetition and change awaken life’s visual juxtapositions. Beauty arises from the mix.” — Ellen Lupton, Jennifer Cole Phillips – Graphic Design

If you could pop immortality into a pill and buy it at your local drug store like aspirin for a headache, would you take it?

I don’t know if I would. I’d love to be able to be stuck in a time-loop, like Grou loop, like Groundhog Day, and spend decades learning and mastering the things I love. (But then again, everything resets each day, so I wouldn’t be able to write things down.) Or become a vampire and see centuries of change.

I’m one of those nuts who is naturally (or perhaps habitually become) self-motivated and disciplined, but the question is, does life lose its meaning and shine when you can live forever?

There’s something inherently beneficial in knowing that we are going to die one day — likely sooner than we think.

Death and near-death experiences highlights Life (with a capital ‘L’) like nothing else can. Death lights a sense of urgency to live a life truth to yourself, and choose to change when things are out of alignment and stale.

I don’t fear death. I fear not living. I don’t want to wake up one day when I’m 90 and feel as though I was never truly alive and myself. I try to live and make decision around that.

It’s interesting that the anti-, or *the opposite* of what we dream and desire about — death, poor health, injury, hunger, debt, failure, loneliness, pain — shines a light on how valuable the good things are.

The opposite shows us the way. I know first hand how valuable health is to everything, when you experience poor health (in my case a chronic neck injury). The bad highlights the good.

What are some bad things you are experiencing and what does polar opposite of that tell you about what you value? (This question needs some refinement. Best I can do at the moment.)

STAY BOLD, Keep Pursuing— Josh Waggoner | Daily Blog #1709

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Pursuit is a fickle thing.

Desiring something doesn’t assure we will receive it. That’s only one piece of the puzzle.

Curiosity, grit, and resilience (aka humble stubbornness), kindness, vision, drive, discipline, friendships, courage, and getting back up when you fear and fail.

In fact, anyone can desire to create something, but not everyone with a desire does. How many kids want to grow up to be an astronaut, yet how few reach it?

Of course there’s always other dreams. Always other ideas and desires we can reach for. Like they say, ‘one door opens as another closes’.

Pursuing something is meaningful, but don’t think it will be easy.

But just because something is difficult doesn’t mean we shouldn’t go for it.

If you can’t stand waking up and not seeing your ideas reality, then by all means, give it everything you’ve got. But remember on the hard days, the fun of creating can also be challenging and that the challenge is part of the fun. (Even if it sucks.)

STAY BOLD, Keep Pursuing— Josh Waggoner | Daily Blog #1708

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There’s a lot of great writing on vulnerability. ,

If we can’t be honest with others about what we are going through, then how do we ever expect to connect with others deeply, let alone be honest with ourselves?

Pain happens. Suck happens. Dumb ideas happen. Your ego is getting in the way if you think can handle all of that yourself forever.

Share. Share the suck. To share is to belong. And we’re all looking for ways to belong. It’s also a better way to live.

STAY BOLD, Keep Pursuing— Josh Waggoner | Daily Blog #1707

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“Character is doing the right thing when nobody’s looking. There are too many people who think that the only thing that’s right is to get by, and the only thing that’s wrong is to get caught.”

J. C. Watts

“Energy and persistence conquer all things.”

Benjamin Franklin

When you do something nice for others, like donating money to medical causes or treating the checkout clerk like a human being, you’re doing it out of kindness, but you are also doing it for yourself. And I don’t mean it in a selfish way. Rather, our actions are a byproduct of our character. And the same is true said in reverse— our character is spoken through our actions.

Character is a state that is defined each day and honed over time.

Character and action are two-way streets. What you do is a reflection of who you are. Not just what you do for a living (although that’s a piece of it) but everything you do (or don’t do).

This means every decision is an opportunity to practice building our character.

Patience, generosity, sincerity, persistence, optimism, ambition, courage, charm, humility, and encouragement— are all things we can practice in our daily lives.

In fact, if we don’t practice them, how else would we expect to get good at them? Magic taters?

One simple practice I like to do is whenever I’m leaving the grocery store, I take my cart back to the store’s entrance. It’s so tempting to unload your groceries in your car, and they peel out of the parking lot, leaving your buggy next to where you parked. What the big deal anyway? I don’t have time to bring it back. It’s someone’s job to gather up all the loose carts anyway. Why should I do their job for them?

Because you are doing it for yourself as much as you are doing it for them.

Everything we do not only sends a message about who we are to those around us, but also to ourselves.

By leaving your empty cart where you parked and driving away, you are telling yourself that you are lazy. Alternatively, by taking the cart back to the store’s queue, you are telling yourself you are hard-working and not to mention caring to boot.

The same is true for anything we do. Holding the door for others. Not letting our angry control us when someone cuts us off or someone loses their temper. Cleaning up after ourselves. Following through with a promise or conversation. Staying true to what we value.

It’s like the old saying goes, “How we do anything is how we do everything.” Especially when no one’s around to keep us accountable.

That’s why I adopted a “Do it Now” mentality. Not everything has the same amount of importance and priority, but taking care of things when they need taken care of is a great way to practice character. If there’s a pile of dirty dishes in the sink, I’m going to clean them now, instead of later. Even if that means I have to unload the clean dishes from the dishwasher first before I can put the dirty ones in. If there’s a thing around the house that needs to be taken care of, I jump on it. If I’m in the middle of something, I’ll focus all my efforts on that one thing, before I jump to the next.

These are tiny things, but they make all the difference.

Because your actions are telling yourself that “I’m the type of person that get’s things done.” This isn’t a blame game. Just because someone else isn’t doing it doesn’t mean I get to point a finger at them for being lazy. Because if I did I would only be practicing characteristics I don’t want to be.

I’m far from perfect, of course. Some days I can barely manage to do my nightly routine and don’t have the energy to clean up the house or put away my fresh laundry. So then I double down the next day. But if I do manage to put away my clothes when I don’t feel like it, I know I’m working my character mental muscles and showing myself what I’m made of.

Remember, It matters less what you’ve done and more what you do.

If you want to be strong, practice strength. If you want to be resilient, learn everything you can about how to persevere in chaos and get back up when you fail.

Everything Depends on Your Practice

Creativity (of any kind) is far from a straightforward pursuit in life. The competition is fierce. The doubt is real (even after success). And we never really “make it”.

What’s the first thing someone asks an artist after their latest piece, a musician after their latest album drop, an author after a book launch…and so on… ?

So, what’s you’re next thing going to be about.

Success, financial freedom, impact, and influence are the byproducts of doing great work, over and over again (think years, not days).

(AND being lucky enough for others to take a chance on checking out your work.)

Which makes creativity really really hard to pull off, but worth it in the end because you get to do what you love and eventually find success (or die trying). If you define success as doing what you love everyday, then having a creative practice creates that reality.

But it’s not going to happen on its own.

Our art isn’t going to make itself.

Our community isn’t going to grow without us nurturing it.

We’re not going to get better at what we do by repeating the same thing over again.

Creativity lives and dies by our practice. How frequently, consistently and intentionally we practice is what separates us from the closet creatives or people who only talk about their dreams.

We must cultivate our practice in order to grow our creativity to that next level.

STAY BOLD, Keep Pursuing— Josh Waggoner | Daily Blog #1705

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Specialization allows us to go deep. Adam Smith once wrote, “It is the great multiplication of the productions of all the different arts, in consequence of the division of labour, which occasions, in a well-governed society, that universal opulence which extends itself to the lowest ranks of the people.”

Or in other words, as we each start to specialize in a narrow but deep skill, everyone combined creates a wealthier society. Think of the classic image of a Henry Ford manufacturing line, where each person has a specific role to play. This idea hit home during the industrial era, when workers became a gear, contributing to the larger success of the machine.

But is this true in the digital age?

Today, AI rules specialization. Even disciplines like driving, medicine, and art are slowly being encroached on by powerfully connected machines. Eventually, it seems like the only reason you’d want a human to specialize in something is for the cute flaws and imperfections we create. (I’m exaggerating a bit here; there will likely* also be a need for some specialization. 🙂

But not all is lost. This is a fantastic opportunity for us to become multi-disciplinary.

Once you start pursuing mastery in multi-skills, an interesting thing happens: you come up with new and unique ideas by combining and mixing each skill’s influence.

Connection is the new currency. Connection creates uniqueness and originality.

How can we connect one discipline to another to create interesting ideas? Or how can we apply one discipline’s way of thinking to another?

But it can’t be just that we pursue everything all at once. Doing everything is the same as doing nothing, becuase there’s only so much time to put towards things.

What are the handful of thing you want to master, and what are some interesting ways you can combine them to create something novel and unique?

STAY BOLD, Keep Pursuing— Josh Waggoner | Daily Blog #1704

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The hardest part about moving past a difficult outcome or failure is to actually move past it and learn from it.

Instead, we dwell on what was or what could have been. Or we move so fast towards the next thing we don’t give ourselves even two seconds to process it.

How many times do you wish something different had happened in your past instead of where you are today?

There are (at least) two battles going on here: what we do, and how we think about it.

1. What we do.

It’s not about what you did or didn’t do.

And it’s not about what you want to do.

It’s about what you do going forward.

What are you doing now that is different, or makes a difference?

What are we going to change or do differently as a result of this failed experiment?

2. How we think.

Likely the hardest part of the two.

Your mindset will either help you or prevent you from moving forward.

You’ve got to let the past go, and focus on what’s possible in front of you. But that’s easier said than done. The past always finds a way to sneak up behind and stab us.

But what else can we do but let it go?

STAY BOLD, Keep Pursuing— Josh Waggoner | Daily Blog #1703

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Time is weird. (And gets weirder the more you think about it.)

We live our lives in fixed moments in time, yet also see our lives stretched into the past and potential future, almost as if we were observers looking in on ourselves.

And over time, our life has a shape. Just like how we as a society point lens to the sky and can observe galaxies in the universe, we can also take a look at our own lives and see all the decisions, lucky encounters, changes, and freckles that add up to who we are right now.

I am the sum of all my past experiences and all my future hopes lived out in daily occurrences. Not to mention the fathomless number of cycles we live in. Nature. Space. Days. Weeks. Years. Centuries. Civilizations. On and on.

Yesterday: This is who I was on that day.

Today: This is who I am today.

Tomorrow: this is who I could be.

Or in other words:

I can’t change who I was.

But I can change who I am.

Therefore I can change who I will be.

And like the Stoics of old, every moment is an opportunity to react well to what we experience—good or bad.

And at any moment today, there’s a chance of change. We can choose to act differently. Or even life can choose things for us. That’s right folks, a lot of who we are was decided by outside influences — parents, culture, environment, God (insert your own beliefs here). But it’s not worth dwelling on.

If you don’t like the shape of who you are, change it.

Focus on the inputs you can change — how you react, how you think, how you live, where you live, who and what you surround yourself with. (And set yourself up to be lucky.)

What’s the shape of your life going to be today and going forward?

STAY BOLD, Keep Pursuing— Josh Waggoner | Daily Blog #1702

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Getting started is the most important step. Otherwise, all we are is talk.

And talk is cheap unless it’s combined with action.

So what if we fail?

So what if we look dumb?

At least we did something, unlike 80% of the world.

There will be a thousand important things we need to (should / could) do, and a thousand more after that, but without the first step, none of those things matter.

We need to be bold (or naive) enough to try.

Obviously, I’d rather do it ‘right’ (whatever that means) and do everything I can to ensure my ideas will succeed, but success isn’t assured (nor inevitable, just because I want it). A lot of people have ideas.

What’s the probability of success? What can I do to make it more likely to succeed? What can i simplify to make it easier for my self to make a move?

STAY BOLD, Keep Pursuing— Josh Waggoner | Daily Blog #1701

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In everything we do, there’s always a chance of taking the easy route.

Especially when no one is watching.

• Eating those cookies at midnight.
• Doing one less set in your workout.
• Skipping one day on your habit.
• Going to bed just an hour later.

Because you can. What’s a little slack going to do?

The problem is, someone is watching: you.

You are seeing yourself and ingraining the bad habits. You are training yourself to take the lazy path in life.

The couch potato life looks glamorous, but it all it does it expand your waist line, and block you from achieving your dreams.

Enjoying life is one thing, but cutting corners or binging is another story.

• Do one more set.
• Take your grocery cart back.
• Go to bed an hour earlier and get up an hour earlier too.
• Take care of yourself.
• Take charge of your spending.
• Do the things you say you want to do.

Be the kind of person who goes that extra mile. Go beyond so that you can show yourself that you can.

When someone goes out of their way, or goes above and beyond, people take note. We can be that kind of person too.

STAY BOLD, Keep Pursuing— Josh Waggoner | Daily Blog #1700

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