There are always going to be moments of doubt on our journey.

Doubt in our abilities. Doubt that we have what it takes to reach our goals. Doubt in our choices.

But that’s part of life. We don’t have all the answers. We won’t always have it together. Half the time we’ll feel like just going back to bed.

We don’t have to be perfect to do great things.

If we had the path 100% figured out, we’d probably find it dull and too boring to follow through with it.

Great things come from honing our skills consistently and continuing to learn, challenge, and push ourselves forward, despite the fear, doubt, and uncertainty we face. And building a strong community around us.

STAY BOLD, Keep Pursuing — Josh Waggoner | Daily Blog #1610

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Ideas are kinda like bananas.

Ideas need time to ripen. There’s a period when a banana is green and not ready to eat yet. There’s a moment when an idea is at its highest peak of opportunity.

And ideas can be bad if we wait too long to create them.

Actually, maybe ideas are like Avocados instead of bananas. Where only the subtlest clues can tell you whether the time is right for an idea. You can see its color, check the stem and apply pressure. But at the end of the day, you won’t truly know unless you cut it open.

It might be too early, but at least you tried making your idea. Most don’t.

And if it’s too late then there’s always next time. There’s no sense dwelling on bad fruit.

STAY BOLD, Keep Pursuing — Josh Waggoner | Daily Blog #1609

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One of the most important (and most overlooked) types of freedom is time.

Time is our great currency. And yet we spend it like we have an unlimited amount.

With the thousands of things occupy our time, it’s so easy to spend time on things that ultimately don’t matter or add up to much.

Time is precious.

It’s the most important because its the most finite resources we have. You can optimize your time, become more effective, more capable, but you can’t get back time spent.

The hard part for me is the tradeoffs:

Do you spend time with your friends? Do you spend time in nature? Are you spending enough time exercising? Sleeping? Do you spend your time working on your job to earn money? Do you spend it on working on your dreams? Do you spend it on a beach?

Or do you simply spend it doing things you dislike because you feel like you have to?

If resources were no option, what would you spend your time doing?

The automatic response is sipping piña colada on a beach somewhere. But that only lasts for a week or so before we start getting bored.

The closer you can get your reality to line up to that dream, the more free you will feel. (Because time is freedom).

If you could be doing anything in the world, what would you be doing right now? Then why aren’t you?

All of us have many things we want to do. But what matters are the things we actually do.

STAY BOLD, Keep Pursuing — Josh Waggoner | Daily Blog #1608

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Not all failure is fatal.

The majority of failure is merely an opportunity to learn, improve, and succeed later.

There are usually more lessons in failure than success. To me, a successful failure is learning to let failures make us better. That’s a mouthful, but you get the idea.

Because when we fail, and don’t learn from our mistakes, we’ll just end up making them over and over again.

It takes courage and humility to get up after a terrible defeat and then find the value from that wreckage and build something out of it.

STAY BOLD, Keep Pursuing — Josh Waggoner | Daily Blog #1607

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When you care about something or someone,

Show up.

Even if you don’t want too (especially if you don’t want to) Because when you show up you’re telling the world — and more importantly yourself — that you are serious.

But showing up not only tells the world what you care about, you’re also showing yourself how much you care.

STAY BOLD, Keep Pursuing — Josh Waggoner | Daily Blog #1606

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Failure is only final depending on where you end the story.

Failure is only fatal if you let it stop you from changing.

Failure is a necessary part of being creative (and being human). Happy Mistakes can become original ideas. Or at the very least opportunities to grow.

STAY BOLD, Keep Pursuing — Josh Waggoner | Daily Blog #1605

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What are we supposed to do after we fail?

It’s easy to dwell and stay stuck in a past failure. And easy to give up entirely when we fail.

It’s also easy to fear trying new things because we fear failing again.

But we have to keep going and find ways to rise above our failures.

Otherwise, where would we be?

Reflect

It’s pretty hard to learn from failure if you don’t acknowledge it. It takes humility to recognize failure. It takes the edge off when you realize that every one of us fails someway or another. It’s part of being human. Even robots malfunction eventually. The key is to not let it hold us back from living.

Motion

Movement helps. It’s like when you stump your foot or burn your hand while you’re cooking—moving around and shaking your foot or hand distracts you from the pain.

Distracting yourself from failure by doing something else gets your mind off of things long enough to give yourself some time and clarity.

This isn’t a distraction from reality, more like a slight-of-hand to get our inner self to stop dwelling on the past and instead focus on the present and the possibilities going forward.

Use It

Failures are not only hard lessons won, but opportunities for growth and change. Use your failure as part of your story. Because failure makes great stories. Be the underdog. Learn the difficult lessons, then use the failure to go further. Make fun of yourself. Take the sting out of the blunder.

Remember: it’s better to fail than not try.

STAY BOLD, Keep Pursuing — Josh Waggoner | Daily Blog #1604

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I’m always seeking goals that are just beyond my reach.

Just beyond my abilities or just beyond what I think is possible.

This would be a perfect time to drop the quote “Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you’ll land among the stars”, but I’m not going too 😉

The problem—if we want to call it that—is that the possibility is high that I’ll fail.

And if you are always aiming just beyond what’s possible, there’s a lot of failing upward that’s happening, which sucks in the moment.

But some of my best lessons, my best outcomes, my best stories have come from failure. We learn more from failure than we do success.

If you are constantly succeeding, everything becomes about YOU. What you are doing and how great you are at doing it. But each time you fail, you get the opportunity to wake up and pause and ask yourself questions. And in those questions you find more about who you are and what you want out of life more than any level of success can.

The goal, of course, is to succeed, but the outcome of failure can also be a success, if you look at in the right angle.

The key is to keep at it and keep aiming.

STAY BOLD, Keep Pursuing — Josh Waggoner | Daily Blog #1603

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Most problems happen gradually. They build over time, like rust to metal and water.

Even now, how many life-altering moments (good and bad) are accumulating and brewing as I write and as you read these words. Events we aren’t aware of.

An acorn is much easier to tame than a tree grown and rooted into the ground.

Compared to actual whiplash moments — injuries, accidents, natural disasters— gradual problems sting even worse, partially because we could and should have seen them coming if we were paying more attention to ourselves and our lives.

We put immediacy over what’s important, and feed impulse over long-term care.

We die for our work, while our health and well-being take a back seat on the bus.

We let stress and anxiety reign, while freedom feels further and further out of our reach.

We isolate ourselves from others to keep us safe from failure and pain, which only inflames our sense of failure and pain even more.

The cure is living intentionally, but the question is how?

How do we control our lives without other people or things controlling us instead?

Living Intentionally

Living with intentionality is part boldness and part carelessness. It’s part focus /desire and part letting go.

It’s giving a damn about who you are, where you want to go, and how you want to live, while also not caring too much and being attached to the outcome.

Being detached yet attached sounds completely mental, unless you think about it from the right perspective. The best example I can think of this evening is a Chinese finger trap toy you might remember these as a kid. An intricate weaved hollow cylinder, big enough to fit to fingers into from either side (usually your two index fingers). Try to get your fingers out with too much force or pressure and the contraption tightens its grip on you. Pull too hard and the fragile system breaks. But by letting go, and calmly removing your fingers and the pressure suddenly disappears, and the trap is released.

Hold to tightly to your life or to a vision of your life, and you actually lose your ability to make true change in your life. Try to force it to your will or let others force your life to their own will and you’ll end up broken, tired, unhealthy and all the other traits you were actively seeking to avoid. But by letting go off the outcome, and boldly following your own path, you open yourself up to an incredible ability to change and make what does change (the things you weren’t expecting) a part of your greater story as well.

It’s a life of caring and pursuing the right things, the things that nurture and give meaning, while also balancing a life of not caring and letting go of what doesn’t ultimately matter when the dust settles, and it’s all said and done.

All the details of an intentional life are up to you and the circumstances life brings. These are the mysteries and unexpected events that spice up life and make things interesting.

STAY BOLD, Keep Pursuing — Josh Waggoner | Daily Blog #1602

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Having an idea and working on an idea are two very different things.

I’ve got a million ideas—most of us do—but only a small percentage of people see them through.

I love talking about ideas. I love coming up with ideas. Things like how to market your new book our how to improve your business.

But lately, I’ve been experimenting with only discussing ideas I have done or am currently working on.

Talking about an idea is only part of the equation. And when it comes to talking about our own ideas, we often talk more than we walk. At least that’s my experience. The problem (if you can call it a problem) is that there isnalways going to be more ideas than time to make them real.

Talking about an idea makes it real-ish. But nobody want’s “ish.” Nobody want to be a wantrepreneur. Nobody wants to be almost an artist, or almost a dancer. We want to be the real deal.

Talking unfortunately is one step forward, two steps back. Maybe in the future we can talk to our AI voice assistants and they’ll code our app ideas for us. But until then we have to built it ourselves.

We need to start building things.

Talk feels like progress, but in reality, talk alone rarely makes the dream happen. It’s a tool we need to use, but it’s not going to build our dream. What other tools will help translate our ideas into reality?

Skills.

The ability to design, write, code, film, photograph, jam, cook—create with our hands gets us there.

Talk gets us close, but skills get us to the goal.

When you know how to write, you know how to paint a picture with words. You are fluent in storytelling and communication. You can make a string of common words look like new imaginative worlds no-one has seen. You can sell and market your ideas and—if you’re really good—perhaps even distort reality around you.

When you know how to design and code, you can take a simple name, like “Facebook” or “Tesla” and make it more real. You can design a logo, a website, an algorithm, a schematic, a robot, a factory.

Skill is how we translate our ideas into something more than ideas.

Skills only get you so far too.

Being able to draw doesn’t put pen to paper.

Ideas are meant to be built.

If we don’t put time and energy into making them, then they are simply just ideas. Ideas taking up mental space.

If you have an idea, something that you must create or at least would be sad if it didn’t exist, then get after it today. Make it happen.

STAY BOLD, Keep Pursuing — Josh Waggoner | Daily Blog #1601

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