Colin R. Stuckert's Blog, page 27

Enjoy The Moment… It’s The Last One Of It You’ll Ever Get

“Our life is made up of time; our days are measured in hours, our pay measured by those hours, our knowledge is measured by years. We grab a few quick minutes in our busy day to have a coffee break. We rush back to our desks, we watch the clock, we live by appointments. And yet your time eventually runs out and you wonder in your heart of hearts if those seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, years and decades were being spent the best way they possibly could. In other words, if you could change anything, would you?”

― Cecelia Ahern, Love, Rosie

When I read this quote I got goosebumps.

This doesn’t happen often—usually during a great movie—but it definitely just did.

The line that keeps replaying in my head is, “And yet your time eventually runs out and you wonder in your heart of hearts if those seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, years and decades were being spent the best way they possibly could.”

Goosebumps, again.

Think about this for a moment: your time eventually runs out.

My time is running out, right now, as I type this. And yours is as you read this.

(By the way, I’m thrilled you decided to share this moment with me. Thank you.)

When you think about the moment, you become aware of it. You come to The Now. You get a chance to savior it, to appreciate it, to feel it, to embrace it. Instead of it being just another moment ignored by a distracted mind, it becomes a valuable gift you appreciate forever.

Take a moment to be in the moment. It’s amazing and powerful how each moment is a moment. There is beauty in every moment.

How many moments of your life have been lost to laziness or sloth?
How many moments have you spent working on a future that may or may not come?
How many moments are you giving up because you are in a rush to get to a future where you will be in a rush, again, to get to another future.

When does the cycle stop? (I ask myself this on a daily basis.)

When do you get to appreciate The Now? Do you only appreciate it when your bank account is full? Or when you are driving a new car or living in a big house?

Can you only appreciate the now if you have the perfect partner, job, or career?

What if there was another way? What if you could enjoy each moment of the journey instead of waiting to enjoy the future? Doesn’t that sound nice? It sounds like heaven to me.

Sweet.

::Enjoying the moment::

Yours in Enjoying The Moment,

-Colin Stuckert

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Why You Need Bad In Your Life

“There is neither happiness nor misery in the world; there is only the comparison of one state with another, nothing more. He who has felt the deepest grief is best able to experience supreme happiness. We must have felt what it is to die, Morrel, that we may appreciate the enjoyments of life.

― Alexandre Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo

Did you know that your greatest feelings of happiness are exactly correlate to your greatest feelings of unhappiness?

Huh?

Think about it: Everything in your life is defined by its comparison to something else. Night is night because it is not day. Physical pain is the opposite of not having pain. Heartbreak is the end of love while “being in love” is, umm, being in love. And so on.

So then, how do you appreciate life if you have yet to feel the effects of death? How do you appreciate success if you haven’t tasted the bitter sting of failure? How do you appreciate love if you don’t know what it’s like to lose love?

The polar opposites are what makes life life. Without good, there is no bad; neither exists because each defines the other. This dualism is what gives us art, music, love, passion, joy and happiness, and, on the flip side, gives us war, suffering, rape, pillage, hate, and murder.

Each one is defined by its contrast to something else.

Embracing this methodically in your life is a practical skill for getting more out of life. Realize that you have to accept good and bad as part of the deal. They are part of the experience. They are the very things that give all things meaning.

We must experience both sides of the coin.

Survive the wrecks in your life you will come out stronger and better.

As humans, we will try anything we can to avoid pain while doing everything we can to pursue pleasure. This is a basic survival trait programmed into our DNA as a survival mechanism. When we lived in the wild as hunter gatherers, we had to be careful everywhere we turned as nature is a dangerous place to live 24/7. If we weren’t programmed to avoid things unpleasant, the human species wouldn’t have survived for hundreds of thousands of years without the help of all the things we have in our modern society.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with avoiding pain and pursuing pleasure, but if we take it too far (as many do), we set ourselves up for catastrophic failure when we find ourselves in a crisis. We find ourselves not prepared when shit goes haywire because we have been pursuing pleasure and avoiding pain for so long that we don’t know how to cope. We are not hardened or strong, which is what we become when we deal with shit.

This is why I always encourage others—and remind myself—to seek out what’s hard in life; what risks failure, embarrassment and pain.

Exposing yourself to the “elements” of life builds resilience. It makes you wise and strong. It prepares you for what could happen. It makes you better. And best of all, it teaches you how to appreciate what needs to be appreciated in life.

After all, if you never experience the worst extremes in life, you’ll have no clue how “good” you have it when you have it “good.” You won’t even know what “good” means because, remember, good is only in comparison to bad and you’ll have no idea what bad is.

 

Yours In Life, Health, and Fitness,

-Colin Stuckert

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Socrates Has Some Advice For You

© Araldo de Luca/Corbis – http://www.britannica.com

“My friend…care for your psyche…know thyself, for once we know ourselves, we may learn how to care for ourselves”

― Socrates

What does it mean to “know thyself”?

I think it means self-awareness. To know yourself is to be self-aware: to know what you want from life, what your beliefs are while having the confidence in each.

How do you become self-aware?

There are a lot of ways to become self-aware, but one that works well is the habit of asking yourself hard questions.

Most people live deluded lives. They shape their opinions, beliefs and ideas based on who and what is around them. They have little wherewithal in understanding why they do, think, say or feel the things they do, think, say and feel.

They are unaware.

There’s nothing wrong with being influenced by others. We are all influenced by others to some degree. But you should at least be aware of who and what is influencing you. This way you at least have a say in what you ultimately let influence you. This is part of becoming self-aware.

When you start asking yourself questions, you start becoming aware of yourself. You start learning who you are. Do this enough and you can literally change your life.

To know thyself is raw power. Yet few do and few try.

When you know yourself, you own who you are. This seethes confidence and assuredness. This is attractive to both sexes. People like you more. You are more persuasive. You are more effective.

Know thyself for thyself.

Yours in Knowing Thyself,

-Colin Stuckert

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Make Today Worth Remembering

“Make today worth remembering.” 

―Zig Ziglar

I wonder what the world would be like if every person lived by this quote.

It doesn’t take much: a conversation, a good deed, a song, a smile, a kiss, a good movie or song or book.

I believe that each of these small instances are worth remembering. We just have to recognize them as such. We get so caught up in “what’s next?” that we fail to appreciate the simple, yet profoundly powerful, things in our lives.

Take this a step further and you have the chance every day to do something to make the world and your life a little bit better than it was before. You have a chance to remember something worth remembering every day.

This has go to be the most powerful concept in a human being’s life. 

Perception is reality. I say that a lot. Rightly so because it’s true.

But I don’t think people really understand what it means.

It means that the thoughts in your head are what form the world you see through your eyes. Think about that for a second.

The only reason you hear a sound is because a sound wave is interpreted by your ear drums which sends a signal to your brain.

The only reason you feel something is because of the same process when your nerve endings are stimulating by something external. 

This is easy to understand because it’s physical, but what about the thoughts that dictate how you feel based on what happens to you in life in the nonphysical realm? 

Most people are used to responding emotionally to whatever happens to them while failing to realize that they have the power to control these responses. 

To put it more simply: You have the power to control exactly what the world is to you.

And most people have been conditioned to be a rule-following “good” boy or girl. They have been programmed to take things at face value; to fear what they don’t know; to think in groups; basically, to live a life just like everyone else as just another sheep in a flock.

And so, for these people, life is just a series of random events that they think they have some say in when, in reality, they are just a pinball being bounced around inside the arcade game of life by random forces of nature and happenstance. 

The worst part of this all is they have no clue as to the power they possess if they were to learn and channel it.

We have the power to see the world in whatever way we want. We can be optimistic or pessimistic or somewhere in the middle. We can see everything as an opportunity for growth and a chance to get better, or we can bitch, cry, complain and moan about our “bad luck.”

We can take risks or we can seek comfort. We can ask for a raise or we can hope it will happen to us. We can share our feelings with that other person or we can hope they will say something first. We can ask for permission or we can ask for forgiveness. We can take action or we can wait for action to happen to us. We can see the world in a way that brings joy and happiness or we can see it in a way that is depressing and glum.

We can choose what we get or we can let the randomness of the universe choose for us.

Hint: Choose the former.

Yours in Remembering Today,

-Colin Stuckert

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Life Is Too Short To Live It For Someone Else

  “Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do, so throw off the bowlines, sail away from safe harbor, catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore, Dream, Discover.” 

–Mark Twain

Which path you gonna take? Your own… or someone else’s?

It’s hard to say something about this quote that it doesn’t say itself… but I will still try.

A common regret of people on their deathbed is they wish they would have lived a life true to themselves instead of one for others. Most people follow a path in life they think is for themselves when they are really just living for the approval and good option of other people.

Money, power, fame, keeping up the Joneses, family expectations, and the other ways we seek to “validate” ourselves is just a way of garnering recognition from other people. And according to those that have sought this their very thing their entire lives, we find that this is a grave mistake for one’s long-term happiness. If you make this mistake, you will regret it. This is now, for the most part, an axiom of life.

Start now. Live for yourself. Do what you want to do. 

Life is too short to not live for yourself first. Your friends, family and cohorts may or may not accept your the life you want to lead, but doing so is still what you must do if you want to be happy. Or, in other words, if you try to align you happiness with the pleasing of others, you will rarely find a way to make that work.

This is why your happiness must come first. Always first.

You and I each get only one chance at this life—we will never get a second chance at living tomorrow, today or yesterday. This fact of life should be the motivation you need to start aligning your priorities in a way that is based on what you want and what is the best reflection of who you are as a person instead of some hollow path based on expectations and the good option of other people (cleverly termed “GOOP” by the awesome dude Peter Sage).

Of course, some people won’t understand your choices. They might not want to get them because your choices might offend them or breed resentment or jealousy in them. But such is life. You can’t please everybody. When you follow your heart, you will actively displease people. But that’s ok. They’ll be just fine. They are too worried about themselves to worry about you for too long so just let it go and accept it as par for the course. In time, most people will come around. And those that don’t shouldn’t be in your life. Period.

And what if you don’t live for yourself? What if you decide to live a life based on the expectations of others? Well, according to Maslow, you would be neglected your highest need as a human being. In short, you become a life-wasting, stifled, unexpressed, zombie-like person that walks around with a calm exterior while living a life of quiet desperation. A price too high to pay if you ask me.

The Way Way Back

Did you know that our ancestors used to live as nomadic hunter-gatherers in small tribes of 40-80 people? Children were raised by the entire tribe. Tribes were a big family. In fact, it was impossible to tell who the father of a particular child was because there were no paternity tests and women were not “shamed” for sleeping with more than one man. Women were also not objects that a man “owned” by marriage or “commitment” because there was no concept of “property” within nomadic tribes. Tribes shared everything: resources, parenting, hunting, forging, building, etc.

It’s suiting, for my point, for you to realize where we have come from so you can see how human beings have evolved (some say devolved) from a life as nomadic hunter-gatherers living in small tribes to living in single-family households within our industrialized societies. 

To say our ancestors didn’t sit at desks would be an understatement.

How Agriculture once again screwed it all up

The invention of agriculture allowed man to stay in one place while living off the land. There was no longer a need to live as nomads in constant search of food. You can see how this might be appealing to humans. Why take a risk in the wild when one can live in permanent structures with a consistent food supply.

For survival and the growth of the species, agriculture was a no-brainer transition. I don’t believe that agriculture is “bad” per se, in fact, it’s the reason I can enjoy typing on my MacBook while standing at my kitchen counter under AC with running water and a fridge and freezer full of food. Without agriculture, I would have never been able to enjoy these benefits. Ad that is where most get it wrong when they like to “blame” it all on agriculture.

Agriculture is the root cause of every human innovation for the last 10,000 years. It has allowed us to create medicines and vaccines for viruses, which has given us the power to beat nature and extend human longevity. It has allowed us to have books and the Internet and space travel and whatever the future has yet to bring. Of course, these innovations have not come without consequences. But such is life: a balance of opposing forces. If you take an intelligently active approach to your health, you can enjoy the comforts of modern life while still living with optimal health.

I digress… let’s get back to what happened after the introduction of agriculture. As humans started gathering food from a permanent location, land became valuable. So did the tools that were needed to farm that land. The concept of personal property was born, and the world forever changed.

With personal property, man established permanent trade through a barter system. The economics of supply and demand were born, and with it came warfare, theft, competition, and eventually, capitalism. In time, certain families (similar to the tribe when we were hunter gatherers) would rise to power and form serfdom and a new class of separation among people based on wealth of resources. Without going into a full-blown history lesson, just know that we have come a long way from living in the wild as nomads to the modern world we live in now.

While man has not genetically been able to “evolve” to match an industrialized food supply, society has definitely evolved. Man, as a societal whole, has undergone many political, societal and socioeconomic “arrangements,” “systems,” and “traditions.” Of course these are different come country to cottony, some of them include: capitalism, feudalism, serfdom, dictatorship, monarchy, republics, the caste system, democracy, and so on. 

Many of these can be studied for what they did right or wrong. I believe that most came and gone for a single reason: inequality. A lack of balance, usually favoring those with the resources, can not last forever in a world where ideas are shared freely and instantly.

So, I bring this full circle back to why you must be weary of any following “tradition” or any life based on the expectations that have been set for you by yourself or someone else. If you were been born into a repressed, ancient, passed-down system that sets forth the path you must take in life (and that is probably dying with each new day that passes by), you must revolt!

Each revolution or uprising in the history of man has been necessary some way or another to get us to where we are today. We have learned and grown as a result of our ancestor’s sacrifices. Those of you that are living in modern society live in a time of great abundance and safety. The problems we face, while seeming big to us, would seem trivial to our ancestors.

Live Your Life

Not living for you first is a great risk. Your parents (and other family) think the way they do as the result of their upbringing. But that was then and this is now. It’s time to accept the new world for what it is: equal, unrepressed, positive, optimistic.

The old ways are broken…

We live in the greatest time mankind has ever seen. You and I have access to as much food as we’ll ever need, medicine and emergency protection that will allow us to live long and healthy lives. We also have the means to pursue whatever passions we want while bringing offspring into a world that will enjoy the same safeties and benefits that we do.

Ask yourself: Are you living for others because they think they know what will bring you happiness? Are you living for others because they are putting their needs over yours?

Life is completely (and only) what you make it. Your perception is what you decide it is. You have the power to see life through a certain lens. If you don’t like what you see, make changes until you do like what you see. Create life for yourself that is a reflection of what makes you happy and fulfills you. And do so unapologetically and as the foremost goal of your existence.

For most of you, drastic measures, like finding a new family, won’t be necessary. The majority of rational and loving people will always come around in time (keywords: “in time”). However, some of you may very well never talk to certain people in your life again should you choose to follow your path. But that is just the price you have to pay… and you have to pay it.

Don’t get upset with me. I’m just encouraging you to live the best life possible. This is serious stuff and it should at least warrant a few long, and honest, conversations with the important people in your life. Maybe you need a good cry, maybe they do, maybe both. Whatever. Don’t do what many families do and go years, even lifetimes, avoiding simple conversations.

Don’t do that.

Do what you must do. You only get one shot at this life. It’s your life. It’s the most precious thing. 

My experiences with people during my short 29 short years on this planet has given me the confidence to dole out this advice freely. I would not apologize nor sugar-coat it as both would be a disservice to you.

The fact is, most people in this world are stubborn, misguided and set in their ways. Most will do anything they can to get others to live the way they think they should live—good intention or not. I’m fortunate to have parents that did not force their ideals down my throat. They let me be myself, even at a young age. I am forever grateful for that gift. I can’t imagine what it must be like to struggle with the flip side of this coin. I’m sure it’s hard. But hard is just hard, and it’s nothing more than that. Hard is not impossible, hard is just an opinion of the level of difficulty that the thing you need to do is. That’s it. Never confuse what’s hard for what’s impossible (hint: not much is impossible).

Your entire life, your thoughts, ideals and beliefs have been morphed into what they are by your upbringing. And you had zero control. If you are coming from a place where the deck has been stacked against you, it’s going to be the hardest thing you’ve ever done to break free from those shackles. For you, this process could take years to overcome. You have to find the truth for yourself. And for all of you, no matter what, you have to make sure you…

…don’t put your life in someone else’s hands!

You only have one chance to live… and then it’s over. Now is the time to live for yourself. Change starts the moment you decide it does. Start NOW. Then get moving with your new plans.

Hate that major? Change it?
Hate school? Drop it. (You can always go back)
Hate your job? Quit.
Have Toxic friends? Find new ones.
Shitty relationship? You know what to do…

If you are “stuck” in something you don’t want to be stuck in, drop that shit like a hot potato.

(A note on higher education: A college degree isn’t going to make you successful just as not having one isn’t going to make you not successful. Your success in life will always come down to your work ethic, integrity, and your ability to work well with others. That said, I don’t think college is for everyone.)

There are many ways to live a “successful” life. Find your own way. Society has mapped out what it considers the “best” is. It looks something like this: Go to school, get good grades, don’t break the rules, get a job, pay your taxes, blab, bla, bla, and then, if you’re lucky, find happiness before you perish.

Let me tell you something about that… it’s a load of bollox. The overwhelming majority of people who follow this path are miserable.

M I S E R A B L E.

If so many of the people that choose this path (one set forth by a capitalistic society with politicians and the rich having the control) are miserable, then what’s the point? Is this the path to happiness?

Good question… 

Why are there so many divorces? Why is our country getting fatter and sicker? Why are so many people working their lives away to afford shit they don’t need? Why are we all in debt and not getting out? Why do we pursue the things that are expensive in time and money—like cars, houses, shiny crap—and squander the things that are free and sitting right in front of our faces—like friends, relationships, nature, and health.

Honestly, it’s fucked.

Traditions, the norm, and what “everyone else thinks” is a sure-fire path to living a life of quiet desperation. It’s time to live for yourself. Be rebellious. Show who you really are to the world and start living the life that reflects that. It’s time to choose the life you want for yourself and your dreams. Start living for yourself.

A note on money

Your life doesn’t have to be based on monetary success or it can be—be careful either way. Money is something that society has convinced us is the path to happiness. And again, the notion is complete bollox. Money doesn’t buy happiness; doing what you love and being around those you love does. The thing is, when you make your life about doing each of these, money usually comes without much thought.

No matter what you do, be wary of trying to fill this “happiness hole” with money, jobs, cars, houses, etc. That hole is a bottomless pit that you will never fill.

Pursue your passions in life whether they make you a lot of money or not. That is your human right and society can go to hell.

If you are true to yourself, and honest with the world about who you are, then you have done all that you can. The world will have to accept you for who you are. It isn’t a debate or as discussion; it is you. Make the world accept you. The easiest way to do this is to be completely yourself beyond any reasonable doubt.

Live for yourself. The rest will follow.

Yours in Life, Fitness and Success,



-Colin Stuckert

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Find Your Art

“I like work: it fascinates me. I can sit and look at it for hours.” 

-Jerome K. Jerome

I work for myself—I am the boss and the employee. And so do you, but maybe you don’t know it yet.

I have to set hours for myself as the boss, and I have to work those hours as the employee. It’s though. On top of this, I have to create stuff and have vision for the future. I’m the CEO and the factory worker in the business of “me.”

And it’s exactly the same for you whether you work for someone else or not.

Your “pay the bill” activities are done by the employee, and your “creation, art, high-ROI” activities are done by the CEO in the business that is you.

We each work as the employee and the CEO to varying degrees in our lives. Some of us have a job and so the employee may get more hours because he brings in the bulk of the loot. Some of us spend less time as the employee and more of our time on our art as the CEO–the starving artist.

This is the constant struggle between the employee and the artist that we all battle. In my experience, our society is one that aims to quell the artist as a means to bring out the employee because it is more suitable for the job/career setting.

And that is a shame.

Some of you are in touch with the artist side of your being, and some of you have been stifling your creative side since middle school when “being creative” went out of fashion because it wouldn’t help you get in college.

In fact, I bet the majority of people that work for someone else in a job/career setting rarely tap into their inner artist with any kind of regularity. It’s a rare job that calls for embracing your inner artist.

“All children are artists. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up.”  -Pablo Picasso

Many of you could probably say you work a lot. Most of us are always “busy” running around doing “work.” But just because you go to work for 8 hours a day does not mean you do work 8 hours. For many of you, this kind of “work” is not work at all, it’s just having a job.

Work is creation. Work is passion and intensity of focus. Work hangs on your couscous and subconscious mind. Work is making progress on that idea that you scribbled down on a napkin. Work is building something that needs to be built. Work is leaving something behind for future generations. Work is making a difference. Work is you doing what you are most excited about, and often, good at.

The right work is art. All other work is a job.

Work is progress on the things you are passionate about. Everything else is task completion, and that is called a job.

We all have work inside of us. Maybe you know exactly what your work looks like, maybe you don’t. Maybe you are secretly writing that novel in your spare time, maybe you need to start. Maybe you are still trying to figure out what your life’s work is. No matter your situation, you must find your work. You must figure out what you will leave behind.

Find your art

Your art can be anything. You are not confined to paintings, sculptures, music, or performance. Your art might be changing lives through your social work. Maybe it is planting that garden or starting that club. Your business can be your art. Coaching others to find their art might be your art. And so on.

The two variables to art are passion and creation. You can’t have one without the other.

Some of us are fortunate enough to get paid to work our art, most of us are not. Either way, we can all work our art. Monetary incentive should be an afterthought for art. Maybe one day your art will pay you, but if it doesn’t, you shouldn’t care because you are just expressing your passion and that is reward enough.

So many of you are stifling your passion and not working your art because you have let other things get in the way. And to that I say: Bollox!

I believe that working your art is necessary to living a fully actualized and happy life. It’s that freaking important. We all have passions, and we all must pursue them. This is part of being human. To repress your passions is to repress your person. You are giving up the very thing that makes you a unique individual. That makes you, you. If you give this up for something else, you will always pay a price.

Work isn’t just a job… its how you spend your time creating

What is your work? What are you passionate about?

First, you must figure out what your art looks like. My art has many facets: building my website and brand, writing articles and books, recording videos and snapping photographs, coaching others to become better, and cooking, eating and thinking about food. They are all parts of me passionately creating what I need to create. I work on each of these to varying degrees (writing is at the top).

2 hours that could change your life

For those of you that struggle with working on your art, this is what you should do: Set aside 2 hours and do good art. For 2 hours, you will work on whatever is welling up inside of you. No distractions, no agenda, no goal, just do good art.

How to use 2 hours to change your life… format:

Go to the library, set a timer for 2 hours, and turn off all distractions—no phone, email, Facebook. Just you and whatever your work looks like: a spreadsheet, a pad of paper to sketch an idea, a keyboard to write, a set of pencils or markers, a hammer and a nail, whatever.
Work for 2 hours straight on something you are passionate about and do NOTHING else during this time. Get up to stretch a couple times but take no more than a couple minutes break, and do not engage in any outside distractions. Don’t let anything ruin your flow. Keep your mind in your work.

Try this a few times and you’ll be hooked. If you are struggling to figure out what your art is, this is the perfect way to figure it out. Creation and self-discovery go hand in hand.

The hard truth: If you don’t spend time to work on your art, you are severely handicapping your life, future and happiness. You are not making your mark on the world. You are not leaving anything behind. You are not making the world a better place for you having been there.

You can apply the 2-hour technique to your job-based work as well. This will allow you to get your bill-paying work done faster so you can spend more time working your art.

We all have to do a job for money, and we all have a job to do for art.  Maybe one day you’ll be lucky enough for them to be the same thing. Until then, you will have to do what we all must do: balance both.

You are the CEO and the Employee in the business of You. The balance between these two is a fragile ecosystem that you must tend to. Let either one overtake the other and you have problems.

My best advice is to keep your employee work to the bare minimum so you can fill that time with your art. Do this enough and one day you might even get paid for it.

Yours in Doing Good Art,

-Colin

P.S. Watch this commencement speech by Neil De Gaiman called “Make Good Art.”

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Life Is Short, Break The Rules. Forgive Quickly, Kiss SLOWLY…

“Life is short, Break the Rules.

Forgive quickly, Kiss SLOWLY.

Love truly. Laugh uncontrollably

And never regret ANYTHING

That makes you smile.”

―Mark Twain

Mark Twain is one of my newest inspirations. The man knows how to turn a phrase. His wisdom is timeless, and even, has a way of sounding contemporary even though he lived during the 1800s.

Samuel Clemens was born on November 30, 1835, and wrote under the pen name Mark Twain. He wrote several novels, two of which became American classics: The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

Twain was more than just a novelist; he was also a riverboat pilot, journalist, lecturer, inventor and entrepreneur.

Sounds like he was a man’s man, and by all accounts, that he lived a full life of success and adulation. But that is not the case. Not at all.

The more I read about Twain’s life, the more I am reminded of how harsh life can be—and how it was back then compared to now. (Hint: we live in the best times that have ever existed.)

For example, early in his marriage with wife Livy, they lost their toddler son Langdon to diphtheria. Then, in 1896, his daughter Susy died of spinal meningitis at the age of 24. His youngest daughter, jean, was diagnosed with epilepsy in the mid-1890s and twice tried to murder the housekeeper during epileptic attacks. Twain’s relationship with her was distant and quarrelsome. At 29 years old, She died from a heart attack. In 1904, his wife Livy died after a long illness.

Damn.

We live in the greatest time ever. Don’t take that for granted

It might come as no surprise that Twain became bitter in his later years, although he was still able to keep a filtered persona for the public. Behind closed doors, he became increasingly insensitive to friends and loved ones. Twain struggled with bouts of memory loss, paranoia and rage. In an attempt to assuage his depression, he smoked cigars and played endless hours of billiards and cards.

On April 12, 1910, Samuel Clemens—Mark Twain—died at the age of 74. He is revered as an American national treasure.

This paints quite a different story than what you might think of someone who was as revered as Twain was.

Despite having multiple well-received and successful novels, Twain struggled with finances his entire life. His publishing company eventually went bankrupt, and he could never quite grasp the monetary success he sought even though he ended up becoming a celebrity during his time.

What is my point? What is the lesson here?

Well, I’m not sure exactly. Usually when I write a Mediation I have a general idea of what I’m trying to “say” and it just comes out once I start writing. For whatever reason, today is not one of those days.

I’m a bit tired actually, which is strange considering I did a coffee tasting this morning and was completely wired (maybe I’m crashing). Anyways—yes, I know I’m rambling—I think there are a few things to note here. I’ll summarize them right quick.

First, life is short, dangerous, and anything can happen. If you don’t already know, I think death is a powerful motivator for life and believe that we should all ponder it regularly. Here’s how…

Negative visualization: Imagine your death. Now use the feelings it elicits to fuel your appreciation and gratitude for life, for the now.

Negative visualization can extend to more than just your own life; you can visualize the loss of anything you care about—belongings, health, other people.

By imaging the loss of something you care about, you are forced to appreciate it. You are forced to express gratitude for having that object in your life. This technique might sound lame or morose, but it’s not. It is extremely powerful and uplifting.

There are many reasons negative visualization is so powerful, but the main one that comes to mind is it forces gratitude. Lately I’ve been reading and thinking about gratitude a lot. It wasn’t until now that I made the connection between negative visualization (which I use often in my life) and gratitude (which I’m getting better at using more often in my life). Gratitude is what makes negative visualization so powerful. It’s cool how things come full circle sometimes.

Here’s a simple gratitude technique I’ve been using lately that you can implement in your life: At the end of your day—or beginning, middle, whenever—write down three things that went well for you. These can be big things or little things. Call this your “What Went Well” exercise.

After you write three things that went well for you, visualize each one and focus on the positive feelings of appreciation you feel. Try to fill your brain with positivity around what your are visualizing. It’ll fill you up.

Start doing this at least once a day. The more you practice gratitude, the more it will filter into other areas of your life. You’ll start feeling happier and more grateful in general. When this happens, this is you becoming happier. It’s amazing.

By expressing gratitude and appreciation for what you have in life—instead of focusing on what you don’t have, which is the sickness of our consumerist society—you become a happier and more optimistic person.

I guess that’s what I wanted to “say” today.

Action: Express gratitude for what you have because it won’t always be here, nor will you always be here. After all, what’s the point of life if you aren’t taking time to appreciate what’s right in front of you?

Author Note: If you’ve read any of my work, you will notice a theme of action. I usually give a suggestion for taking immediate action. This is important to note. Reading books and articles to expand your knowledge and awareness is great, but what’s the point if it doesn’t translate into something tangible in your life? Take action and get better. This takes your knowledge to an entirely new level. This is how you can become wise at a young age. This is how you gain experience. Action is how we get to where we want to be in life. And the thing about action is, it never leads you in a direct path to where you are trying to go in the exact way you think you should be going. For example, taking an action to express gratitude can translate into you becoming happier, which can translate into you performing better at work, school and in your relationships, which can lead to more opportunities and missing more pitfalls than you would have had you not been as happy. See what I’m getting at here? Make it routine to take consistent action in every part of your life and your entire life becomes better. If you do this, you can change your life in a relatively short period of time.

Yours in Fitness, Health and Life,

-Colin Stuckert

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Life Is A Science Experiment (And How Are You Doing So Far?)

Today is November 9 and the year is 2014. There will never be another 10/9/2014. There will never be a chance to “redo” today or the previous week. This is morbid, even depressing, and yet, it is also the greatest source of motivation and inspiration for living life now and into the future.

You know, sometimes I have to remind myself why I write, and constantly think about, these topics. When I think on it, I think about the times in my life when I had little hope and living through each day was a struggle. I then think about how, even now at a time when I have plenty of things to be positive and grateful for in my life, I still struggle on a regular basis.

And I realize that this is just life and to stay a step ahead of it, one must be prepared. Then, finally, I think about the fact that there is no paradise, or utopia, or perfect place we can ever get to. Life will never be perfect, and no matter how good it gets, it won’t stay that way forever.

To answer the question of why I write and think on these topics so much (which, from my point of view, becomes redundant pretty regularly), is it is my way of being best prepared for what life decides to throw my way.

I can’t control the future, but I can be as best prepared for it as possible. And to not be prepared is to hand over my destiny to the randomness of the ether that is time and space. No thanks. I’d like to have some control.

And that’s why I write and think about life, death and being the best I can be.

Enjoy this Gym Life Meditation…

-Colin

*  *  *

“There are no shortcuts to any place worth going.” 

―Beverly Sills

Humans are strange creatures. We live our entire lives making plans for things we think we want while taking action we think will get us there and then get upset if we are detoured from what we we thought was supposed to happen.

Are we clairvoyant?

What makes us think that we have any idea about what will happen in the future.

Why are we so arrogant? What is our obsession with avoiding failure? Why do we expect ourselves—and others—to be perfect? Why do we care so much what others think? Why do we shape our appearances, beliefs, and the things we do on a daily basis to satisfy the fickle opinions of other people?

Science has answers to these questions, and I have my ideas, but these questions are meant to be rhetorical. Ask them of yourself.

When we make plans, we formulate expectations based on those plans. Consider what a business plan is—it’s a set of “projections” based on a certain timeline of what we expect (hopes) will happen.

Ya right.

As plenty of smart people have said, “No plan of battle ever survives contact with the enemy” (Helmuth von Moltke), or as John Lennon is frequently attributed as saying (incorrectly as he only adapted the phrase into his music—the quote is attributed to Allen Saunders), “Life is what happens while you’re busy making other plans.”

No matter what history has shown us, we still audaciously believe we can set a plan for the future while expecting it to come to fruition as is. Then, when the future doesn’t live up to our expectations, we kick and scream, and usually, give up. We are basically trying to predict the future. Obviously, that’s dumb for many reasons.

Maybe we need a different approach?

I say yes. 

Most people are not fond of approaching life as an experiment. This makes sense because scientific testing takes work—and humans don’t like to do work… in case you forgot. Testing requires you to try more than once. It could take a couple tries or a hundred (or a thousand in the case of the incandescent lightbulb). We want to do it once and get it right because we are either lazy or arrogant, sometimes both.

But the thing is… a testing mindset is the best way to approach life.

Every single thing in your life is a test that provides feedback. If you make iterations based on this feedback, you have a framework for finding success in anything in life. Life will literally lead you the way. This is so simple, yet few do it because it’s hard. You have to embrace failure, and you have to put in the work. And most people do everything they can to avoid both.

Start thinking like a scientist.

A testing framework can be used for the largest and smallest instances of your life. What you don’t realize is, you’ve been doing scientific experimentation your entire life.

Think about it…

How did you figure out what your favorite drink is? You tried a few options and made a decision. And that was a successful executed scientific experiment. Just because the drinks weren’t lined up in a lab in random beakers does not mean that it was any less “scientific.” You’ve been applying scientific testing to things your entire life—cuisine, food, fashion, books, art, music, people, professions, jobs, etc.

Just as you test different ingredients in the kitchen to learn new recipes and techniques, you should test life.

Everything in your life has been a test so far, and as far as personal preference goes, we are all pretty good at figuring out what we like and don’t like. But when it comes to things like money, success, purpose, and happiness, we get stuck. We expect to get it right the first time. Choose the right career and be happy. Find the right partner and be happy. Find the right friends and be happy. Find the right hobbies and be happy. Buy the right house and be happy.

And so on…

Honestly, when the hell are we ever right the first time on anything? Come on. Not to mention the fact that our tastes and preferences are constantly changing and evolving.

Why do we think that we are supposed to choose perfectly the first time around when making the most important choices of our lives?! And yet, this is exactly what we, society, friends and family expect us to do.

It’s asinine.

It might take you trying 10 careers to find the one you love. It might take the same number of partners to find the one you want to marry—and then it could take a couple marriages to find the right marriage (hopefully not that many). It might take living in a few houses and a few cities to figure out where you want to live. And so on.

The thing about this expectation-based behavior is it’s easy to fix. Start approaching these choices scientifically: Test until you find what you like.

That’s it. Just like you would try a new dish (or taco) at your favorite restaurant.

You have to TEST life!

I know what you are thinking and the answer is NO: This approach does not trivialize the important decisions in your life. It actually does the opposite: it creates a deeper investment because you are able to find what works and what doesn’t based on experience, which gives you more confidence in your decision.

So, what does this look like in practice?

This:

Take internships and part-time jobs to learn and get experience in various industries
Date as many people as it takes to learn what you like and don’t like instead of settling with what’s readily available
Take courses in school until you find something that interests you (and if you don’t find anything, keep searching)
Seek friends that uplift you and make you better, and remove friends that hold you back
Start and stop as many businesses, careers, or projects as necessary until you figure out what feels good and brings you results

Ultimately, if you pursue the things you want to spend your time doing, the rest tends to figure itself out. This should be obvious considering the fact that we are all going to die one day and we will never get a chance to repeat the time we spend. Yet still—because it’s easier—most people take the easy route and settle for their first, or easiest, decision. That is, in my opinion, the reason there are so many people stuck in crappy relationships, jobs, and situations.

Never settle for the first in anything. Test then iterate. Life will lead you to exactly where you need to be if you approach it scientifically with a curious and open mind!

Yours in Life, Fitness and Success,



-Colin Stuckert

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Choice As A Muscle

“For every minute you are angry you lose sixty seconds of happiness.” 

―Ralph Waldo Emerson

Dammmmn… what a quote.

Emerson was such a boss. This is what Elbert Hubbard, a contemporary and author of A Message to Garcia, called Emerson: “our modern Plato,” and “Every time I pickup a volume of Emerson, I have to reach for my notepad and pencil.”

I’ve only read a few of his Emerson’s essays, but that’s going to change. I’m now committing myself, with you as my witness, to reading all of his works.

Now, back to that quote…

There is a concept known as “negativity bias” that humans are prone to. Negativity bias is the phenomenon of human behavior in which we more vividly recall past negative experiences over positive ones. Nature has a reason for this.

In a nutshell, humans are designed to be negative because avoiding things that are bad for us, like spiders, snakes or sabertooth tigers, would have been conducive for survival. By being on the “watch” for anything we would label “negative,” we are more likely to avoid unfavorable circumstances. Being overly optimistic would make one lax in carefulness, and as a result, probably wouldn’t last very long in the harsh and unforgiving wild.

But that was then and this is now. 

Nowadays, a negativity bias is, in most cases, dangerous and a self-fulfilling prophecy. You probably know a few people that could be called “downers.” These people see the worst in everything to the point of being blind to the positive. The thing is, they were not born pessimistic; they developed pessimism by succumbing to negativity bias over a long period of time.

Negativity bias is one of the reasons I don’t watch the news: it’s fear-mongering crap meant to tap into the negativity bias inside us all. It’s meant to scare us and get us addicted to feelings of fear so we will keep tuning in to the latest event we should be scared of.

As the news corporations (and ad agencies) know, negativity is an addictive drug. The more you dwell on it, the more you will. What’s especially insidious about negativity is the fact that most people brush it off as no big deal, and will delude themselves by saying things like, “I’m not like that.”

No matter how optimistic of a person you think you are, if you aren’t vigilant in combating negativity bias, you can slip into  the trap that negativity bias so carefully lies for you.

Negativity is a choice. Anger is a choice. Happiness and positivity are choices. Your view of everything in your world is a choose matter of perception. Everything is choice. But choice doesn’t come automatic or easy, and if you aren’t used to the idea of making conscious choices—because you only make them reactionary—then it will take some getting used to.

Choice is like a muscle; you have to train it constantly to make it stronger and more efficient.

Choice… it’s more than just the tools you use

As optimism and forward-thinking as I am, I struggle with bouts of negativity and pessimism on a regular basis. I have good days and bad days, just like everyone else, and if start letting my bad days go unrestrained, I will end up having more of them. Like a weed, they would quickly overrun my garden of optimism until nothing was left.

The best advice I can give you is to be vigilant and never lax in building your positive mindset. Your mind is constantly changing. To think that you are now the person you will be in a year—or five—is ludicrous. You have to develop who you are going to be on a daily basis.

You have to train your optimistic muscles every chance you get because if you don’t you will be letting your negativity muscles rule the day.

Yours in Life, Fitness and Success,



-Colin Stuckert

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Ancient Chinese Advice More Necessary Than Ever

“Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life.”

― Confucius

We’ve all heard this. But I don’t think all of us live by it, or truly get it.

How does this apply to you? Well, let’s see…

Are you waking up every morning and rushing to work because you can’t wait to create for your passion? 
Are you waking up every morning and rushing to work because you slept in from hitting snooze too many times because all you want to do is sleep and not go to work?
Are you doing a bit of both: work on your passion in your spare time after your pay-the-bills work is done?

My advice is to carve out as much time for your passionate work as possible. There is nothing wrong with moonlighting your passion if that is the situation you find yourself in. Keep doing it until it is enough to fully support you.

If you are already working your passion, keep doing it. My advice for you is to make sure you focus on your best work and avoid letting all the other stuff that is loosely centered around your work distract you. This is especially applicable if you find your passion growing and bringing you more success. As this grows, a bunch of other stuff will start seeming like a valuable use of your time. But it will never be.

Your art should always be your focus focus. Follow Pareto’s Principle and stick to the 20% work that gets you 80% of the results.

If you let all the other stuff get in the way, you’ll end up getting any real work done. Don’t succub to the artist’s dilemma: when the artist becomes popular, he has less time to produce art.

Whether you become popular or not, the Internet provides a mountain of distractions that all look like “shiny balls” worth a bounce. Trust me, they aren’t.

For example, the 20% that produces 80% of my results is writing. It’s easy to get sucked into spending my time on things like optimizing my blog, checking stats, looking for new marketing ideas, and so on. But I’ve learned that the only thing that really matters is producing more quality writing. So I focus on that. (Since I started focusing on my writing, I’ve finished 6 books and have 3 more down the pipeline.)

What if you are stuck in a job because you have bills to pay or a family to support?

The plunge is scary and deep but totally necessary

First, start saving for the “plunge.” You will have to, at some point, quit and pursue your passion full time.

Life is risk, but more importantly, its stupid short. Whatever fears that float around in your head about money or circumstance need to be quelled as complete and utter nonsense. You will figure it out.

A fact of humans is we usually have our greatest breakthroughs when our back is to the wall. For most of you, you will never achieve greatness until shit gets really hard. This is why risk will end up being your best friend no matter how illogical it might look on paper.

And really, why would you live a life that is anything but what you want? Really… think about it. Your life might be over in a few years, or tomorrow, so stop sitting around biding your time pretending you have so much of it. None of us have so much of it, yet we all can have enough of it if we use it properly.

That said, you can make the plunge a much less scary proposition—or a complete no-brainer—by moonlighting your passion long before quitting your crappy day job. Get your first client, sell your first product, make your first dollar, then scale it up. When your passion becomes enough to support you, quit your day job. (Or quit when your passion is 1/4 or 1/2 to supporting you as that will force you to hustle.)

It’s really as simple—and as hard—as that.

Let’s hear your thoughts in the comments… I’m always interested in hearing the limiting beliefs that people hold when they talk about topics like this.

-Colin

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