Tag: Renaissance Life

Be What You Want to Be

What makes you YOU?

Is it your likes and dislikes? Is it your culture or your heritage? Is it where you go to school or what you do for a living? What about your taste in podcasts or your ironic mug collection? Is it your fashion style (or lack there of)?

There’s a lot that goes into making a person. Sure, you’ve got your blood, muscles and bones, but there’s a lot that we naturally absorb as we live our lives. We absorb what’s around us and either accept, ignore or reject everything in millions of ways.

Music plays a large part of our foundational makeup. We identify who we are by the music we are interested in. Lack of music defines us too. Every so often I’ll run into someone who doesn’t like music, or at the very least doesn’t listen to it. To me, this is baffling (This emoji sums my reaction up nicely: 😧) — how can someone not like music?! But it’s true, and that’s a piece of what makes them who they are.

I wouldn’t say that I grew up in a musical household per sé. My first concert was likely a Christian pop or rock band like the Newsboys or Audio Adrenaline… I definitely got my taste in 60s, 70s music from my parents. Creedence, Thin Lizzy, The Bee Gees and AC/DC — from my dad. Prince, Tears for Fears, The Beatles, Michael… — from my mom.

Friends and other people I looked up are a huge influence on my taste in music. One key influence was from my friend Jake Lemons. (Hey Jake 👋) Being a killer guitarist, he’s the one who lit the spark for my interest in learning to play music (him and my grandfather). He’s also the one that helped me find Led Zeppelin, Jimi Hendrix, Pink Floyd and Ozzy — the kind of people who take music to a whole new level. (Def Leppard: Pour Some Sugar On Me — Jimi Hendrix: “Hold my beer”)

It’s funny how a single person, a small moment, or a passing conversation can have a massive impact on your trajectory in life.

A spark is the best analogy I can think of at the moment. Influences are like little threads that lead us down a path towards who we are. One second we are seeing in low resolution standard definition, and the next second we are seeing in 1080p. We’re not quite at 8k HDR yet, but if we keep searching we’ll get there before we know it.

And at the heart of it all— music tastes, personality, dreams, etc— is discovery. I discovered who I was by taking an interest in things.

Or put another way —

You are what you want to be.

Curiosity makes us who we are. Deciding to do, like or be a certain person makes us who we are. Allowing ourselves to be influenced by the people around us makes us who we are. Most of the time this isn’t a conscious decision we make. Rather, something we just do and notice (or not) afterward. Oh, wow. Looks like i just ate the weight of a triceratops in ice cream.

Invisible scripts run a lot of our lives. But not if we decide to do something about it. If there’s something you don’t like about yourself, or how your life looks, you can change it. Depending on what it is, it might not be easy — but it’s possible. You have the power to own your life. And it starts with seeking it out.

STAY BOLD, Keep Pursuing — Josh Waggoner | Daily Blog #1433

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Jessica Jollie (Owner of Yoga Landing): Yoga, Balance, Building a Business, Overcoming Injuries and Building a Thriving Community (RL #18)

Hello Friends! Welcome to another episode of the Renaissance Life Podcast. This episode is a conversation with Jessica Jollie, founder of Yoga Landing.

We go into a lot of different topics—overcoming injuries, starting a business, teaching, balancing work with family, and more.

Renaissance Life is a podcast for multi–disciplinaries and is dedicated to the pursuit of creativity, mastery, and a meaningful life.

Download The Jessica Jollie Action Guide PDF:

I’ve decided to take another crack at Patreon. One of the perks of becoming a Renaissance Member is receiving a downloadable action guide from each episode of the podcast (including past episodes).

This is something I personally put together and spend a lot of time on. I distill the essential lessons taught by my guest, featuring key insights, challenges, and practical steps we can take and experiment within our own lives.

If you aren’t familiar with Patreon, It is a membership platform that provides helps creators and artists—like myself—earn a monthly income by providing rewards and perks to their subscribers. This is a cheap yet valuable way to support my work.

Another perk for being a patron (at the Renaissance Savant tier) is you get to know who I’m interviewing in advance so that patron members can provide me questions you want me to ask the guest.

Go to Patreon.com/RENLIFE to Join—or just to window shop 🙂

Show Notes:

Jessica + Yoga Landing:

Josh + Renaissance Life:

Links Discussed:

Overstimulated

One thing you’ll battle as a multidisciplinary is too many inputs (TMI 😜) vying for your time and energy. Heck—everyone alive in the modern connected age is bombarded with knowledge and information nowadays, not just Renaissance types.

Put aside all the ads, opinions, and data you don’t care about, even the knowledge we seek out can be TMI and overstimulating at times.

On any given day, there are dozens of books, hundreds of videos, emails, articles I want to consume, and thousands of decisions I could take, but just because I have the options doesn’t mean I should try doing them all (especially all at once.)

I always feel particularly overstimulated on days (like today) when I haven’t slept well or when I’m not at my best. Noticing this feeling is the first step to counteracting it. When you notice something is off, you can lighten your load for the day (as much as you can allow) and reduce the pressure of the daily fire hose of information.

Minimalism is a good practice to follow to reduce overwhelm. The last thing you want to do when you are overwhelmed is go shopping, or watch 15 shows on Netflix, or stress about all the important things you should be doing today but can’t quite muster up the energy to do.

Filtering is Key.

Quality over distraction. Fewer options. Remove any visible reminders of todo or potentially todos in your immediate environment. Limit access to your phone or computer (only the essential current needs.)

One Thing at a Time.

Do what you need to get everything else out of your head so you can focus on what’s in front of you. Prioritize your tasks, but focus only on the immediate priority. Pretend like nothing else exists during this time you’ve allocated.

Remember What’s Important.

Make sure you actually have to do the things you think you have to do. Is this required of me? Is this task mine? Is this my responsibility? Or am I adding unnecessary items to my to-do list?

STAY BOLD, Keep Pursuing,
— Josh Waggoner | Daily Blog #1190

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Saturday Updates: 01/23/21

I want to up my game when it comes to writing and with the Renaissance Life. Many moons ago, I had this dream of becoming a Renaissance Man. Someone who is a master of multiple skills and who walked through life with a spark of creativity, curiosity, charisma, and wisdom.

I started writing blogging every day as a strategy for becoming a better writer. Writer’s write. Dancer’s dance. Developers code. To be in the game you have to play the game.

I was (and still am) inspired by Seth Godin’s prolific amount and quality of work. I also was conversations having several separate conversations with new people in my circles who were taking on 30, our even yearly around daily creative challenges. The tea leaves were telling me to write every day—so I did.

Now, every writing a 1000+ consecutive blog in a row, I want to get to that next level. In all this time, I’ve only been working on RL on the side—well, more like the side of the side. I spend about an hour or two a day on writing and editing my podcast.

I don’t know how yet, but I’d like to turn Renaissance Life into a media company, not just a random guy who happens to blog every day.

That starts with being more consistent with my newsletters and podcast.

It also means thinking long term about what I want the RL to be, who it should be for, and how I can be of more service to you and your goals.

Plus have fun doing it too 😜.

STAY BOLD, Keep Pursuing,
— Josh Waggoner | Daily Blog #1174

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Subscribe: Renaissance Life on Apple Podcast | Renaissance Life on Spotify

Learning to See

I recently found my old sketchbooks from middle school and high school. Back then, I remember thinking my art was pretty good. I would get compliments on them too (and not just from my mom.)

Looking at them now, I see how raw my skills were, how little I knew. Rough sketches of keyblades, characters from my favorite shows, still life sketches, all drawn with a heavy hand. Not to belittle my younger inexperienced self. I don’t see his (my) work as terrible or cringe-worthy. It’s more nostalgic than anything.

A big part of creative work, be it art, film, music, writing… is progressing to new levels of understanding and seeing.

At each stage, we use the knowledge and experience we’ve got to work with. It’s only until we reach a new level of understanding that we glimpse the flaws in our previous work. No—not flaws. It’s more like we go from standard definition to high definition, and then from HD to 4K, and so on.

SD only looks blurry and muddy in retrospect. At the time, it was sharp to our inexperienced eyes.

When you look at your previous work and see the flaws and what you would do differently, then you are in a good place. Because you’re able to observe what you couldn’t before shows how much progress you’ve made.

STAY BOLD, Keep Pursuing,
— Josh Waggoner | Daily Blog #1070

P.S. If you enjoyed this article, consider buying me a coffee ☕️

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Colin Wright: Writing, Entrepreneurship, Overcoming Failure and Creating an Intentional Life (RL #17)

This is another episode of the Renaissance Life Podcast you don’t want to miss. A conversation with Colin Wright. Colin is the author of many fantastic books, including Becoming Who We Need To Be, Some Thoughts About Relationships, and Act Accordingly. He is also a speaker and host of the podcast Let’s Know Things.

Topics include writing, traveling full time, entrepreneurship, how to start something, handling fear and failure and so much more—

Renaissance Life is a podcast for multidisciplinaries and is dedicated to the pursuit of creativity, mastery, and a meaningful life.

Download The Colin Wright Action Guide PDF:

I’ve decided to take a crack at Patreon. One of the perks of becoming a Renaissance Member is receiving a downloadable action guide from each episode of the podcast (including this one with Colin).

This is something I personally put together and spend a lot of time on. I distill the essential lessons taught by my guest, featuring key insights, challenges, and practical steps we can take and experiment within our own lives.

If you aren’t familiar with Patreon, It is a membership platform that provides helps creators and artists—like myself—earn a monthly income by providing rewards and perks to their subscribers. This is a cheap yet valuable way to support my work.

Another perk for being a patron (at the Renaissance Savant tier) is you get to know who I’m interviewing in advance so that patron members can provide me questions you want me to ask the guest.

Go to Patreon.com/RENLIFE to Join—or just to window shop 🙂

Show Notes:

Colin on the Web:

Josh + Renaissance Life:

Links Discussed:

Get Active in Your Own Rescue

I love this quote from Marcus Aurelius:

“Get busy with life’s purpose, toss aside empty hopes, get active in your own rescue—if you care for yourself at all—and do it while you can.”

I read it recently in The Daily Stoic. I love it because it sums of own of my life principles so eloquently. Get active in your own rescue.

There have been quite a few quotes I’ve encountered on my journey that rings with a similar tone:

“To hell with circumstances; I create opportunities.” — Bruce Lee

“Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.” — George Bernard Shaw

“The most difficult thing is the decision to act, the rest is merely tenacity. The fears are paper tigers. You can do anything you decide to do. You can act to change and control your life; and the procedure, the process is its own reward.” — Amelia Earhart

“Some people want it to happen, some wish it would happen, others make it happen.” — Michael Jordan

My version pales in comparison, but it’s —

You are Your Own Renaissance.

Meaning, change starts with you. No one wants it more than you. Perhaps you’re dealing with problems, perhaps you dislike habits and things about yourself, perhaps you wish your life was different—well no one is going to make that happen for you.

Waiting for someone to change our lives for us won’t get us anywhere.

As much as I wish someone would do it for me, it’s not going to happen. I’m the one who has to get active and take steps to make the change happen. If with (generous) help, I still must be willing to change and stick to that aim.

It’s not about refusing help, or going it alone—it’s about owning up to your life and the kind of person you want to be.

If you care for yourself at all—then to hell with problems, fears, and circumstances—go out and create yourself and make it happen.

STAY BOLD, Keep Pursuing,
— Josh Waggoner | Daily Blog #950

If you enjoyed this post, consider buying me a coffee ☕️ or a new plant. 🌱

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Finding Renaissance

“Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?”

Mary Oliver, The Summer Day, Pulitzer Prize winning poet.

Life is a series of awakenings and revivals. Sometimes awakenings happen inactively without our input. The loss of innocence for example. The multidisciplinary, Neri Oxman, describes the feeling as ‘discovering innocence at the moment you lose it’. Born in Haifa Israel, for her, it was her experiences in served in the Israeli Armed Forces as a teenager that opened her eye’s to the harsher sides of life.

Awakenings can also happen actively from our own curiosity and discovery too. The moment you think you have things figured out, an idea, a quote, a change, a friend or an influence rocks your foundation of who you are and what you think about the world. For me, health was a big one.

Growing up, I didn’t know a thing about health and wellness. (Neither did my parents.) Being a 90’s baby, I practically lived off fast-food, soda, refined bread and lucky charms. I was constantly catching colds and having sinus problems, but I didn’t know that was not normal. I had no frame of reference to compare my health to. It honestly never occurred to me until much later that food changed how you look and feel. I had no idea how impactful food, exercise and sleep could be on the quality of your life. It was until much later after high school when I read a few books on health and exercise and discovered the impact of health. The crazy thing is I know I’m not the only one who was asleep to the ideas of health. Perhaps this blog post is the first time you are waking up to the importance of health yourself.

A more common word for awakenings we experience is change. Life is continuously changing.

The historical Renaissance (14th – 16th century) was a time of innovation in art and human potential based on the revitalization of Roman and Greek thinking. To put simply: It was an age of discovery, creativity and pursuit. Today, life and technology moves at breakneck speeds. So must we if we are going to take advantage of our brief and precious life. Because life is moving so fast and becoming more connected, things can easily feel overwhelming at times. It’s easy to default to living a life of someone else’s dreams, instead of one you decide on yourself.

Today we face a new renaissance — A personal renaissance. And a renaissance of like-minded individuals like us all seeking a different and more meaningful way to live. We must become more resilient, adaptable and creative to be who we want to be and to do what we want to do. Dreams of a lifetime don’t happen with wishes. We must create them happen.

‘Renaissance’ comes from the combination of the French verb ‘renaitre’ — ‘to revive’ and the noun ‘naissance’.

Your renaissance life is your own, but it begins the moment you decide you want to seek out change and recreate yourself into the best you possible. The more we can learn about ourselves — who we are, what we like, what we stand for — the better we will get at reaching for the ideal. The renaissance life isn’t about perfection, it’s about pursuit. It’s about pursuing intentional changing and being lifelong learner in the skills and characteristics we want to master.

STAY BOLD, Keep Pursuing,
— Josh Waggoner | Daily Blog #733

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IG: @Renaissance.Life

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Breaking the Fear Wall

What is your fear telling you not to do?

When you hear the phrase, ‘public speaking’, do you break out into arm sweats? Does the idea of writing a book or build an app (or to fail at writing a book or building an app) curdle your blood?

Are the things you want to do — dreams you desire more than anything — always seem to take the back burner, the last thing you do, or something you procrastinate into oblivion?

Then what your fear is telling you not to do, is exactly what you need to be doing.

Don’t get me wrong, fear sucks. No one ever said it would be easy to start a band or build an audience on YouTube.  But the ones who do and stick with it are the ones who are masters of their own fears. Fear is how we grow into our best selves.

The stronger the fear, the more you need to take action and do it.

Creative fears always feel impossible until you do them.
Creative failures always seem fatal before the fact.
Pushing past these creative barriers will amplify your confidence and creativity.

What fears do you need to tear down to build a better YOU? 

Stay BOLD, Keep Pursuing,

— Josh Waggoner

IG: @Renaissance.Life

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Related Insights

“You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, ‘I lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along.'” — Eleanor Roosevelt

“If you want to conquer fear, don’t sit home and think about it. Go out and get busy.” — Dale Carnegie

“Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear, not absence of fear.” — Mark Twain

Decide Who You Want to Be — Life Principle #24

Labels give us power.

We label ourselves with our work, our hobbies, our brands.

But what do you do when other people label things for you? What do you do when you find yourself in a place where your life is labeled by other peoples hopes and dreams?

You decide to change.

Life Principle #24: Decide and Commit to Who You Want to Be

Decisions are the foundations of making change happen. 

What areas in your life are you seeking change?

When you want to create a change, something new and exciting, you first have to make a decision. Decide on the change, commit to I­t­ 100%, will I­t­ into existence.

Life can either happen to you, or you can choose what you want your life to be. Again, a decision.

Choose Creativity.
Choose Freedom.
Choose Differences.

Decide who you want to be, then go make I­t­ happen.

Stay BOLD, Keep Pursuing,

— Josh Waggoner

Hello, World!

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Related Insights

“Strength does not come from winning. Your struggles develop your strengths. When you go through hardships and decide not to surrender, that is strength.” — Arnold Schwarzenegger

“I don’t want other people to decide who I am. I want to decide that for myself.” — Emma Watson

“The most difficult thing is the decision to act, the rest is merely tenacity. The fears are paper tigers. You can do anything you decide to do. You can act to change and control your life; and the procedure, the process is its own reward.” — Amelia Earhart