“Making the work you want to make means finding nourishment within the work itself.”

David Bayles and Ted Orland, Art & Fear

Great things take time. Most of it happens unknowingly under the surface. That’s why we’ve got to love the work we do. Otherwise, we’ll quit or coast before we make real progress.

When you love what you do, then all you have to do is keep challenging yourself and keep pursuing it no matter what.

Failure sucks. But stopping because you failed (or stopping because some random thing in life got in the way) sucks even worse. Because you’re left with feelings of ‘what if’. What if I kept going? What if I never quit? We can also start and begin again. But what if we decided to become so ‘crazy’ and never stop, to begin with?

We may not be where we want to be, but that doesn’t mean we can’t enjoy where we are.

As long as we keep going strong, we’ll get there when we are ready.

Enjoying where we are is tricky because by its very nature, growing and improving yourself highlights that you’re not at the level you want to be yet. Of course, there’s not a there there. ‘There’ is just another moment on the continuous path of a lifelong journey.

STAY BOLD, Keep Pursuing— Josh Waggoner | Daily Blog #1820

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We all have our unique strengths and weakness.

More often than not, the person that keeps me from greater success is myself. I am my biggest ally, but I can also be own worst enemy.

Sometimes we sabotage ourselves intentionally. We do this out of fear. Believe it or not, fear of success is a real thing. But there’s also feel of making mistakes. Fear of failure. Fear of not being perfect.

You probably fear success too. I think it boils down to change. We subconsciously see the negative parts of change (The fact that things will be different and never the same as they once were) and then see what change can do positively for us.

But the worst kind of self-sabotage is through neglect. We just let things slip by and rust. We do this by prioritizing everything but what matters to us.

The key to success is doing the opposite.

STAY BOLD, Keep Pursuing— Josh Waggoner | Daily Blog #1819

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I tend to be an over-giver.

If someone I love needs something, I’ll do what I can to help (even if I’m not in a place to do so.)

I’m not a “yes, man.” I can easily say no to things that don’t align with my core values. And I also have a visceral feeling about time, and how precious every second is, so I try to say yes to only important things and no to everything else.

But if a friend needs someone to talk to, I’m there. If someone I love needs my help, I’ll do what I can—and then some.

It’s the and then some that sometimes come back to bite me. Because If I give too much and forget to give to myself, I’ll start to prune up (so to speak.)

If you’re like me, it’s easy to forget your needs and rather focus on the needs of others. And it’s always easy to pour your energy into things that don’t fulfill you.

It’s not necessarily the giving that’s the problem, but the lack of receiving. Giving can be just as energizing as receiving. But if you aren’t giving yourself the time and space you need to refuel, then giving starts to become a problem.

Whether you’re giving energy to others or giving it to unrewarding things, sooner or later, too much and you’ll soon burn out.

Give time for what you need.

We all need rest, clean food, movement, solitude, fun and nourishing community.

Without it, we turn into pale imitations of who we want to be.

It’s hard to give when you’ve got nothing left.

Do what you need to do to thrive so that you can help others at a whole new level of strength and enthusiasm.

STAY BOLD, Keep Pursuing— Josh Waggoner | Daily Blog #1818

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I don’t know where you are in life, or what you want, but I do personally that waiting for it to happen means it’s never going to come.

Dreams and Opportunities work like ordering a pizza — if you don’t call it in and order it, it’s not going to be delivered to you.

There is no limit to the amount of opportunity that surrounds you. But it’s not going to show up with bread sticks and ranch sauce without you seeking it first.

You have to reach out first.

You don’t know how good or bad you’re unless you put yourself to the test. When you are put in an environment where your stepping into things you’re uncomfortable with, you’ll probably will suck at it, but at least you can get the suck out of the way. Testing grounds should be sought out, not avoided.

Improvement happens after the suck, it won’t feel great, but it does add up after a while.

Bitterness is like ink overrunning on a sheet of paper. It stains everything: your hands, the paper, and everything it touches.

The problem is — to take this analogy to the extreme — the ink is invisible.

Bitterness hits us and builds before we even know what it is. Outwardly, it can be confused as anger, resentment, passive-aggressive or reckless. But usually, it’s unseen and harms the giver more than the receiver.

Bitterness happens when things don’t go in our favor. The fault can, and usually is, completely out of our control. Yet we are the ones that still feel let down by events and life and bite the bitter fruit.

Bitterness is cured by resilience. We need to be able to adapt to misfortune and find the sweet / opportunity in any bittersweet moment. Things happen. How we think about these things and what we decide to do with them is how we win.

When you do your best and nothing goes right, it’s not you — it’s your playbook. Find more information. Seek wisdom and counsel. Learn to have compassion for yourself, even when you feel like doing the opposite.

When in doubt, throw out your playbook, start from scratch or find a better one.

STAY BOLD, Keep Pursuing— Josh Waggoner | Daily Blog #1815

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“Begin – to begin is half the work, let half still remain; again begin this, and thou wilt have finished.” — Marcus Aurelius

“What’s so fascinating and frustrating and great about life is that you’re constantly starting over, all the time, and I love that.” — Billy Crystal

There was this silly board game called Don’t Break the Ice, that I vaguely remember playing as a kid.

A character (Polar Bear? Penguin?) stood dangerously on a raised grid of ice cubes. I guess to simulate a frozen lake or treacherous mountain pass. Each player took turns chipping away at the ice with colorful little hammers.

If the little animal dude falls on your turn, you lose. Now that I’m thinking about it, It’s basically like if Jenga was played horizontally, not vertically.

Learning and mastering skills remind me of Don’t Break the Ice.

When we become good, even great at something, we can easily fall into the pattern of holding onto what we’ve got like we are about to fall to our deaths. We learn, and then we stop. We don’t stay up-to-date. We don’t want to try new things. And we eventually become complacent with our skills and inevitability grow rusty and obsolete.

But getting good at multiple skills requires us to be comfortable with starting over.

A beginner’s mind is learning to enjoy starting over. It’s not only the willingness to start again but the drive to continuously learn and relearn what you know.

Starting over isn’t a bad thing. It’s a blank slate. It’s our chance to reinvent ourselves and take in knowledge with a fresh and deeper understanding.

Whatever skills we cultivate, we should always be reapproaching the fundamentals and what we think we know. Just because we think we know something doesn’t mean we do.

Forcing something to happen is a lot like heating up an empty kettle on the stove – no matter how long you heat it, it’s not going to boil water that’s not there.

Some things can’t be forced, in fact, by wanting something so much you get the opposite effect.

Don’t wait for inspiration though. That comes from motion and momentum. Let the idea come to you. Let it simmer in your head and on the page.

STAY BOLD, Keep Pursuing— Josh Waggoner | Daily Blog #1813

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“The secret of change is to focus all of your energy, not on fighting the old but on building the new.”

Dan Millman

How much mental energy are you giving to things you can’t change or control?

Focusing all your energy on past mistakes is only draining you of the energy you need to build the new.

Find something that can wake yourself out of mental and emotional states that are making you feel helpless and stuck.

No amount of worrying is going to make it better and less worry-ful. We could worry ourselves into oblivion and there would still be room for more. Same with anxiety, self-doubt, anger, or emotionlessness.

Don’t focus on who you should be, who you wish you would be, or who you can’t seem to be, rather focus on the next action that will create a little bit of sunshine and meaning within the person you ARE right now.

The nice thing about the past is that we are building it this very moment, as each second ticks behind us.

This gives us the opportunity to put our past-self and mistakes behind us — no matter how close to the present they were — and work on becoming a little better and a little more like the person we want to be today.

STAY BOLD, Keep Pursuing— Josh Waggoner | Daily Blog #1812

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One thing you learn very quickly when pursuing a creative skill—or any skill for that matter—is it takes more time than you think it does.

A skill isn’t just the skill itself, it’s also everything around it.

Let’s say you’ve grown up on boxed foods your entire life, and one day you decide you want to learn to cook. Great! Cooking is a useful skill to have. Not only can home-cooked food be better for you and taste 10x better than 80% of restaurants and 99% of packaged foods, but you’ll also be able to share with other people who are in your life. (Food gatherings = closer family, more connected community.)

But wait, there’s more to cooking than the time it takes to crack a few eggs in a pan and call it dinner (although, some nights are like that). Cooking is multiple things combined:

Research: What do I want to cook? How do I cook it? What do I cook it with? How long?

Experimentation: What if I tried paprika? What type of acid flavor do I want to use? What happens if…

Pick up: Getting to the store, Playing where’s Waldo with each grocery item, waiting in line (or waiting for your delivery, Going home from the store

Prep: Washing, Chopping, Dicing, Salting, etc

Cooking: Getting the oven ready, watching the food cook

Eating: Take your time, don’t wolf it down like an animal

Cleaning: Dishes, Leftovers in the fridge

All of this is worth the price of admission, but as you can see, it’s going to take a lot longer than you think it might. (You can see why meal prep, food delivery, and dinner delivery companies are killing it.)

And it’s not just cooking that requires a lot of time to do it properly. Every skill requires time. There’s a hidden cost to every skill (and everything we do).

This is why the majority of Renaissance people are terrible at managing their time.

I’m bad at this. When I hear about some rad interesting skill I want to jump in immediately and learn it. Now, there’s a time for trying new things and expanding your skill sets, but if you want to master something, you’ve got to prioritize it by giving it your most valuable resource: time.

Time management is essential to finding mastery and living a meaningful life.

This means we have to be picky about where and to who we give our time too.

The best place to start is to figure out where all your time is going.

Dig around in your iPhone or Android phone settings and you’ll find screen time averages.

I’ve also personally been thoroughly using my calendar app to track every minute of my day, so I know how much time I’m spending doing what.

Not knowing where your time is going is letting life steer you, versus you controlling life.

STAY BOLD, Keep Pursuing— Josh Waggoner | Daily Blog #1811

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