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“Interval training [often at midday or lunch break] and meditation together are beautiful habits to develop to cultivate the art of turning it on and turning it off.”
“I want to build my life around flow states [the sense of being ‘in the zone’].” TF: This is something Josh Waitzkin (page 577) talks about often: journaling and using tools like HRV (heart-rate variability) devices to identify the patterns and prerequisites that create peak flow states or their opposites.
“To me being jaded is almost like being dead. Nothing impresses you because you feel like you’ve seen it all before, and you go through life with dark lenses on . . . the curtain’s closed. No light gets in, no rhapsody gets in, and to me that’s death.” TF: Closely related advice from one of my own mentors: “Be a skeptic, don’t be a cynic.”
“Don’t go for funny. Go for the truth, and you’ll hit funny along the way.”
Reality is largely negotiable. If you stress-test the boundaries and experiment with the “impossibles,” you’ll quickly discover that most limitations are a fragile collection of socially reinforced rules you can choose to break at any time.
1) To get huge, good things done, you need to be okay with letting the small, bad things happen. 2) People’s IQs seem to double as soon as you give them responsibility and indicate that you trust them.
Instead of answering, “What should we do?” I tried first to hone in on answering, “What should we simplify?”
Perhaps I’m just getting old, but my definition of luxury has changed over time. Now, it’s not about owning a lot of stuff. Luxury, to me, is feeling unrushed. No hurry, no pause.
‘Let me tell you something, brother. The notes are right underneath your fingers, baby. You just gotta take the time out to play the right notes. That’s life.”
What is something you believe that other people think is crazy? “Our existence is programmable.”
What past limitations—real or perceived—are you carrying as baggage? Where in your life are you pacing in a 10-by-10-foot patch of grass? Where are you afraid of getting sprayed with water, even though it’s never happened? Oftentimes, everything you want is a mere inch outside of your comfort zone. Test it.
Months later, after focusing on my body instead of sitting around trapped in my head, things are much clearer. Everything seems more manageable. The “hopeless” situation seems like shitty luck but nothing permanent.
If you don’t care about yourself, make it about other people.
Go to the gym and move for at least 30 minutes. For me, this is 80% of the battle. When possible, I prefer an actual “How can I help you, sir?” gym to walking or a home-based workout, as the last thing I need is alone time with my head. Somehow force yourself to be around other humans.
Each morning, express heartfelt gratitude to one person you care about, or who’s helped or supported you. Text, message, write, or call.
If you can’t seem to make yourself happy, do little things to make other people happy.
The term “Rodriguez list” has come to mean writing down all of your assets and building a film around the list.
“There’s a freedom [in] limitations. It’s almost more freeing to know I’ve got to use only these items: turtle, bar, ranch. You’re almost completely free within that.”
I always found success by just going the opposite way. There was too much competition over there. If everyone’s trying to get through that one little door, you’re in the wrong place.
What kept it going is when I would go back and review the journals and realize how many life-changing things happened within a weekend. Things that you thought were spread out over 2 years were actually Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and that Monday. So many occurrences happened in chunks that could blow you away, things that kind of define you. . . .
“You’re just opening up the pipe and the creativity flows through. And as soon as your ego gets in the way, and you go, ‘I don’t know if I know what to do next’ you’ve already put ‘I’ in front of it and you’ve already blocked it a little bit. ‘I did it once, but I don’t know if I can do it again.’ It was never you. The best you can do is just to get out of the way so it comes through.
You’re upset because something didn’t go according to plan? It might be for a good reason.”
I’m not trying to sound like Mr. Smiley Positive Guy. That guy ignores the hard truth. That guy thinks a positive attitude will solve problems. It won’t. But neither will dwelling on the problem. No. Accept reality, but focus on the solution. Take that issue, take that setback, take that problem, and turn it into something good. Go forward. And, if you are part of a team, that attitude will spread throughout.
