Classic Chicken and Egg

Starting is hard.

You want to start, but you don’t how yet.
You want to be good, but you don’t think you’re ready.
You want to just do it, but everything feels terrifying and unclear.

The weird thing about starting is —

It’s easier to start when you’ve already started.

Habit and momentum carry you forward.

But when you are starting out (or thinking about starting) you might as well be standing in quicksand. You haven’t built up the creative muscle yet to push through difficult moments.

That’s why getting (forcing / incentivizing, / tricking, / faking) yourself to start is essential to working on your dreams. If you don’t start, nothing happens. Dreams are built every time you step up and go to work on them.

STAY BOLD, Keep Pursuing,
— Josh Waggoner

Daily Blog #661

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Creative Excellence

Outputting great work requires surround yourself with excellent inputs.

The goal is to set up your physical and digital environment where you are the most creative and effective version of yourself.

Friends, Books, YouTubers, Habits (good and bad), Location all influence and bend us towards being a little like them. We’re our own person, but we naturally absorb the traits and qualities of the things and people we surround ourselves with.

Surround yourself with excellence won’t make you great at what you do — that requires work and consistent practice of your creativity — but it will inspire you to act and challenge yourself to do things you wouldn’t have thought was possible otherwise.

That’s why joining or starting a group of like-minded individuals seeking a better life for themselves is a great way for each member to lift each other up.

STAY BOLD, Keep Pursuing,
— Josh Waggoner

Daily Blog #660

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Harder than it Looks

Pretty much everything worthwhile is harder than it looks. Difficulty is equivalent to the 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 single day.

STAY BOLD, Keep Pursuing,
— Josh Waggoner

Daily Blog #659

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Beauty Arises From The Mix

“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

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 stuck in a time-loop, like Groundhog Day, and spend decades learning and mastering the things I love. 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 fire underneath you 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 80 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). Bad highlights good.

STAY BOLD, Keep Pursuing,
— Josh Waggoner

Daily Blog #658

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Vacation

“Rest when you’re weary. Refresh and renew yourself, your body, your mind, your spirit. Then get back to work.”
Ralph Marston

I’m at the beach this week with the family, for some much needed R & R. I’ve been overworked and stressed the H.G. Loving Wells out the past couple months. Money, health, friendships, calling, all swirling into bickering problems. Which usually leads me working more than I should.

I also secretly love working. Especially when I’m working on my own ideas (like this blog for example). But always working doesn’t equate to feeling refreshed and the most clear headed in wise decision making. It’s usually when I’m overworked when I’m the most grumpy.

Working more has diminishing returns. The more you work, the less quality you get
Hard work is incredibly important. But working from both ends of the candle is not going to do you any favors.

No matter how small, we need downtime to feel our best.

I’m itching to work on something right now, but I’m not. I’m going to get as much rest and renewal out of this vacation as I possible can.

STAY BOLD, Keep Pursuing,
— Josh Waggoner

Daily Blog #657

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The Process

“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

Creativity is hard.

Everything that can get in the way of your work, 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 #656

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Shhh

“The best part about being alone is that you really don’t have to answer to anybody. You do what you want.”
Justin Timberlake

How much time in any given day do you spend un-distractedly alone?

No phone, no tv, no people…. just you, yourself and you.

One of the best ways to get to know yourself (and what you want for your life) is practicing the art of being alone.

If you started lip-sweating at the thought of being alone, then you might be a people person.
Five minutes to yourself, and you’re texting your friends about doing something. Of course, nothing is wrong with spending time with people you love (it’s an essential part of cultivating a meaningful life). However, fearing along time is a great way to ignore yourself and who you want to be, which can lead you to saying yes and taking turns in life that you don’t want.

Because sometimes (often) we do things that goes against what we really want. Our hearts and minds say one thing, but our body does another. The more in-sync (NSYNC) you are with your mind, emotions, spirit and body, the greater your ability to act with gusto on your dreams and desires in life. Solitude is a great tool for this.

Solitude is also a great way to uncover problems in areas of life that are bothering you, which opens up a dialogue with yourself to find the next steps to resolve them. Problems in life usually start out like a leaky faucet, hardly noticeable at first — drip, drip — but overtime — drip drip drip — quickly overtake your life and flood your apartment.

When things go wrong, I turn to friends, but I also spend a lot of time in solitude, listening and checking in with what’s wrong, what’s missing and what I can do next to start to fix it.

There’s nothing quite like sitting down to a blank sheet of printer paper and giving yourself all the solitude and time you need to fill it.

We often know what we want, know what we are doing wrong, know what’s the problem and the solution, but we aren’t listening to ourselves long enough to hear it.

Spend some time alone today.

STAY BOLD, Keep Pursuing,
— Josh Waggoner

Daily Blog #655

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Short Term Long Term

It’s good to compare the short-term value versus the long-term value of what we say yes (or no) to.

If I say yes to a work opportunity, what’s the short-term value and long-term value, and what’s each half-life? How long does the value last? Trade for example. If I trade a logo design for a food gift card

Short-term and long-term usually comes down to immediacy. If you don’t have any money for food this week, then trading work for a food gift card would be a great idea. But if you’ve got plenty of money for your essential needs, then training your time for food is a debatable value.

Long-term benefits are almost universally more valuable than short-term due to compound interest.

It’s worth noting that consistent short-term actions lead to long-term value. You can’t have a long-term vision without the short-term actions to get you there.

STAY BOLD, Keep Pursuing,
— Josh Waggoner

Daily Blog #654

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Curious

Think of passions like objects of gravity.

What are you drawn towards? What centers you? On days when you have nothing to do, what do you still manage to give time to?

Those are the things you need to pursue.

If you don’t know what your passions are, what nudges you? What sparks your curiosity?

Curiosity is a wonderful tool to use and follow straight towards what you’re passionate about.

STAY BOLD, Keep Pursuing,
— Josh Waggoner

Daily Blog #653

Join the Renaissance:

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Worth It

Every problem has in it the seeds of its own solution. If you don’t have any problems, you don’t get any seeds.
Norman Vincent Peale

No one ever said pursuing creativity would be easy. It might be the most challenging thing you ever do. That’s why it’s worth it.

Remember, when the bad days, the sick days, the overwhelming days hit, there’s always another side, another chance, another way, another sunrise. Your creative work is a spark of inspiration and hope for when you (and others) need it.

STAY BOLD, Keep Pursuing,
— Josh Waggoner

Daily Blog #652

Join the Renaissance:

IG: @Renaissance.Life

If you enjoyed this blog post, consider becoming a patron.

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