emotions

The Benefits of Free Time 150 150 admin

The Benefits of Free Time

In this article I’m going to share with you the benefits I’ve experienced through having lots and lots of free time. If there’s interest I can share the downsides too cuz uh…it hasn’t been all roses.

Backstory of Having Damn Near No Free Time

There was a period of time where I was working a job I hated then doing deliveries on the side and it felt like I was just spinning my wheels. My expenses = money I got from the job I hated + delivery money. I just kept hearing this message in my head that said “you’re wasting your time”.

Then, I went to a conference called Love Rising in Hollywood, CA led by Kyle Cease. A core message I got from that conference was to stop chasing money, and so that’s what I did. He published a book called The Illusion of Money not too long after this workshop.

I tried my best to do everything – especially creative work – from a heart-centered space. I really felt like I was fed up doing work and feeling like a damn slave. I quit my job right after getting out of that conference (because I was doing it just for the money), and life hasn’t been the same since. In many ways it has been amazing, and in many ways it has been horrific. I’m sharing the good stuff here now though.

Online learning

There is literally so much information on online that you can web surf through – especially with YouTube. I also like my local libraries online resources, and if your local library sucks then…I’m sure you can find a way to break some rules…Just don’t hold me responsible.

I tend to gravitate towards the practical information and online courses. People are taking their knowledge and putting it in online resources at a level that has never been seen before – especially with COVID. All i need is an internet connection and a device that can use that internet connection to show me stuffs. I just found another course I wanna take today from Scott Scorch (a little disappointed it’s only 2 hours long). It was a gateway to find the other courses on the platform though.

Finding Money to Play With

I’ve been able to “find” money through different ways. Lowering expenses dramatically helps with this a lot! No more car note draining my finances, and no more expensive rent. HAD I BEEN MORE PATIENT, last year would have been my first 6-figure year by way of crypto. 2020 was the first year ever I felt like I was able to play with money. And it was all because of downsizing, doing independent contract work as a gig worker when COVID hit, and binge watching videos on crypto.

Self Care

Sometimes I wonder how people deal with self care with a job. Meditation, hygiene, fitness, food prep/shopping, self care appointments i.e. doctors/dentists, vehicle care, living space care, fun/hobbies/creative outlets, assessments about all of the above, and learning about how to improve all of the above.

This about this – I’m a single guy, but what about if you’re in a household and have to take care of others? Many of these things can’t be outsourced or helped by a significant other. How do people adequately do self care when a job takes up such huge blocks of time. How do people fit all this in? I think the answer is many people don’t.

Doing Things At Different Times Than The Majority

In a populated city like Houston, Texas it feels so much better to do things when others don’t do them. I don’t have to sit in traffic during lunch time when everyone is one the road. I don’t have to deal with large crowds in stores because I can shop while everyone is at work.

No More Resentment For Things That Were Taking Up My Time

I don’t find myself saying “I don’t know enough time”. I could easily say that when I had a job, and it would make me resentful towards the job. I was spending a lot of those days working feeling resentment.

Lately, if I can deal with what others say and think about me and accept it and not be triggered by it, then I can experience that freedom. That is a part of the freedom. I might be called lazy or a bum, or not self sufficient (nobody’s really self-sufficient) in the short term, but over the long term things start to get really good. You don’t relate to money with this neediness and it can flow to you.

Depth and Quality Creatively

I put depth and quality together because depth has a lot to do with quality. I can’t get to the level of mental depth I could creatively as long as I was using so much mental ram on my job. This is the biggest benefit. It gives me room to breathe. I can step back and see the forest for the trees, and not always be stuck in the trees.

I don’t even think my brain could go into writing an article list this or many of the other articles I’ve written without sufficient space to let my mind wander into different rabbit holes. Eventually, the rabbit holes start to connect together in a way I can’t predict.

Nothing feels rushed now. Even if there is a deadline to things, I don’t feel the intense pressure I would feel going to jobs. I can take my time cooking up good shit. Good plans, good assessments, good articles, good presence with people, good quality overall.

When I would work at jobs, I very rarely got to see my own work. It was purchasing and data entry, so…it was gone as soon as I did it. I never got to see it or marvel at it or add to it or build on top of it. I’ve created a lot that I get to look back on these past years. It makes me waaaaaay more proud.

That’s it folks

That’s all I got. I’m thankful that I made it a priority to downsize and take my time investments away from chasing money and started to embrace and cherish the time I have on this earth. There is nothing like it.

My Top 10 Books 150 150 admin

My Top 10 Books

My intention with this article is to share the top books I’ve read. At the time of this writing I’ve read somewhere between 100 – 200 books. Some things to note before I give this list.

  1. These books helped shape ME. They are important books in MY story. It’s really hard for me to agree or disagree when someone lays out a book list and says “These are the best books on X” because it is shaped by their unique experience.
  2. Much of what was really impactful to me and stood out as being the best for me weren’t books. Maybe a “My top 10 resources that aren’t books” article next?
  3. I listed these in the order I read them, so it’s kinda like a story.
  4. Most of these books I’ve either read as a physical book or an audiobook. I don’t think I’ve ever read a whole book on the Kindle app or tablet.

I look at books like a tool set. There are so many ideas, invitations, suggestions and mentoring out there to fix the problems that will inevitably come up in life – especially with the rise of the internet and online resources like YouTube and Google to go along with books. Let’s get into it.

Alfred’s Basic Piano Library

I know. It’s cheating because there’s more than one book here (a whole ass library yo) but….that’s ok. Sometimes I be cheating.

These were the first books I remember being into studying piano. I spent SO much time slogging through these books (slogging because I didn’t understand the payoffs of consistent practice AND felt that I couldn’t just practice when I wanted to). Both of my great teachers used these books to teach me, and I still use so much of what was in these books today playing piano.

I remember we focused on the books on theory, ear training, song/hymn books and finger exercises.

The Power of Now – Eckhart Tolle

This is the best book I’ve ever read…still. It talks a lot about surrendering to the moment, and I think I had to surrender for this book to even show up in my world.

I remember it helping me specifically with emotions. I’ve probably saved SOOO much stress just by reading this book pretty early. When I started reading this book I was feeling so frustrated. The go-to-school get-a-degree and have-a-safe-stable-job-for-life path just seemed so ‘not me’, but I was headed right down that road, and it made me afraid for my future. Meanwhile, I was registered for college classes I wasn’t paying for AND I was skipping them. So mix in some guilt in there too with the frustration.

One of the resolutions was just to have some space from thinking period, which made me feel lighter and more peaceful. It was like erasing a chalk board full of stuff on it. Then, I could deliberately choose what I wanted to add on to it.

This book alone helped me be a match for more upbeat, positive people. This book was my introduction to meditation. It just showed me how much my own mind was beating me down. I hadn’t ever considered that I could actually just turn my thinking off. It was soooo freeing to be able to have some space from my negative thoughts that had gone on for decades.

Meditation and spiritual teachers have been a well for me to go back to when I feel like I’m getting bogged down by life. I can take care of things a lot better when I’m taking care of my own peace of mind.

The Pick-Up Artist – Erik von Markovik

I really wasn’t motivated by pick-up until I moved in with a friend who was naturally great with women. When I lived with him, there were just so many women in our world largely due to him, so it made me curious as to what he was doing to bring them into our world. He invited nudged me to share my love of music more with everyone, which pushed things to a whole nother level. We went out to clubs and bars and events all the time.

I still remember the 5 things from this book. Leader of men, protector of loved ones, preselection, willingness to emote and successful risk taker. If you watch enough nature documentaries you’ll even see these in the animals. It’s like a biological, evolutionary thing.

People were really turned off by the formulaic, forced aspect of pick-up overall and the inauthentic, canned routines – as they should be. But to me, the underlying principle to the formulas and routines that I can align with is this – be a better man (embody masculinity) and the feminine will be drawn like a moth to a flame. And so, the next books you’ll see stem from my desire to learn what it meant to be a better man.

No More Mr. Nice Guy – Robert Glover

I remember this book being about honesty and maintaining integrity – and sometimes that isn’t nice.

Reading these types of books and moving in with three other masculine men helped me see, and more importantly feel what I missed out on growing up. Up until that point, I really didn’t understand why not having a father around mattered. I could write a book on this. It would be titled The Absence of the Masculine.

Growing up around all women led to me HAVING to please women and be nice all the time, and this did a lot to offset my polarity while watering down an already muffled voice.

Luckily there was music to offset this. I felt the total opposite as it relates to music. I was learning music and performing and in the choir so my voice was heard a lot. I could be free and was encouraged to make mistakes.

Outside of music though, my voice was drowned out by a chaotic household. There was no masculine to balance that chaos out and calm it and ground it effectively. I think that’s why The Power of Now was so powerful for me. I read this in college, and that was the first time I felt like I got some peace.

This book (along with living with very blunt and honest roommates) gave me permission to be honest – and there is nothing more freeing than being honest. It also showed me that people respond well to genuine truth whereas my family seemed to drown it out.

Living Abstinently

Remember the chaotic household? Yeah one of the most chaotic things was our eating habits. We pretty much ate fast food every day, little to no cooking and were all fat!

Foodaddicts.org was a program that FINALLY introduced some structure by way of food that made complete sense, and this book was an overview of that program. There was also other books we used a lot though too.

It was so simple and not profit-motivated. There was no buy-this-food-from-my-company in it – just normal foods you buy on the outside perimeter of the grocery store. It was FINALLY an answer to the question I had for decades on how to TRULY lose weight – specifically fat with JUST nutrition and what I was eating. I lost about 110 lbs through this program. It was like my body was saying “thank you for finally putting some stuff we can really use in here”. I gained the weight back plus more when I left the program, but I can’t erase what they taught me over there. It checked so many boxes, and I will be forever grateful.

The Illusion of Money – Kyle Cease

This is for the money chasers or if you feel like you’re chasing anything period. Chasing can get exhausting if you feel like the chase never ends.

There was soooo much talk of money in my family ALL the time. All that talk heavily influenced me to get into accounting in college (seeing as I have a whole family of accountants). The rap music I was listening to was always talking about money. It made me exhausted of thinking about money. Like damn…we’re not gonna focus on anything else here?

HOW I was making money became a lot more important around this time. Life started to be REALLY good, and for the first time it was starting to feel unbearable to keep doing the flat, boring, repetitive, meaningless slave work that had served me in the past to just stay afloat financially.

I read book this after attending Kyle Cease’s conference Love Rising. And I started working on Social Expansion (now Welcome Home) right there. It felt good to finally work on something NOT for the money.

The Big Leap – Gay Hendricks

So…things were going amazing. It made me feel like, “damn…this was more along the lines of the experience of life I was supposed to have”. Then everything crashed, and it seemed like I made it crash. I remember sitting and tryin’ to figure out WTF happened.

The Big Leap is one of the only books I know that addressed this as what is phrased as an “Upper Limit” problem. Things get too good, and you aren’t used to things being this good for this long, so you get scared and sabotage yourself and bring yourself back down to the comfortable problems you’re used to experiencing. At the time of this writing, it’s the book I want to revisit the most.

Atomic Habits – James Clear

This is one of those books where I just read it off recommendations. It gets recommended everywhere in the personal development space, so I read it and understood why it was recommended. Just reinforced the idea that big things come from the small. There are a lot of ways that idea can be applied, and I hadn’t thought of the ways presented in this book.

Will – Willard Carroll Smith II aka The Fresh Prince aka Will Smith

Let’s go Willard! I loved this book because of the dynamics of the audiobook. There was actually music in this book along with all the twists and turns his life took. It really kept my attention for over 16 hours! That’s damn hard to do. It wove in all the different parts of his story – including the bad and ugly. I appreciated his transparency, and as a creator I learned a lot about creating an engaging EXPERIENCE for the person on the other side of the creation (the reader/listener/viewer).

Can’t Hurt Me – David Goggins

This is up there with me as far as the best books ever – top two next to The Power of Now.

It really inspired me to examine and be curious about the limits of what my mind is telling me is possible on a day-to -day basis, and it’s written by a VERY credible source. David Goggins has really pushed himself and CONTINUES to push himself incredibly hard to find his true potential, and it’s so inspiring to me.

This dude is SO badass that there is ANOTHER BOOK made of someone living with him called Living with a Seal (I haven’t read that one, but I could just imagine what’s in it). If you ever feel defeated, pick this up. Like…now yo.

Give me some time to internalize his work and the messages, and I won’t be so fanboyishly in awe of it.

Honorable Mentions

50th Law – Curtis Jackson (50 Cent) and Robert Greene

I loved only the parts where 50 cent was speaking (at the beginning of the chapters). He would say something short in the beginning of the chapter and then Robert Greene would expound on it. I thought they could have cut Robert Greene’s part off though. It seemed like it was fluff to me.

The MagicRhonda Byrne

This book is all about appreciation and really explores creative ways to appreciate. I’ve loved Rhonda Byrne’s style since her documentary The Secret. She’s so resolute about positivity. Of the author’s on this list that have authored more than one book, she’s the only author on this list where I can say I’ve read ALL of her books (except her latest Masterclasses…I just found out about them yesterday).

The Courage to Be Disliked

This might go along with No More Mr. Nice Guy. I just happened to read this one later. I think I was also diving into exploring freedom and what that meant, and this showed up. There’s a lot written about systemic freedoms, but this and other books I’ve read deal with freedom internally. It’s about facing a hidden fear of being disliked (if you have that fear).

Well…that’s all folks for now. These were the books that stood out to me as the best.

Lessons from Meditation / Visualization 150 150 admin

Lessons from Meditation / Visualization

I’ve been doing almost a month of meditation/visualization combined. I’ve done this work before, but my visions were much smaller. Here are some things I’ve noticed usually after 30 days.

  • Life moves faster, and so it’s important to remain grounded amongst the chaos.
  • Relevant, specific, synchronistic information flies in fast. I’ve seen it come in through many directions – Youtube videos, conversations, coaching calls, a note on the ground, the first thing that plays on the radio when you turn it on (these have all happened to me). Pay attention to even the littlest things so you don’t miss out.
  • Welcome the discomfort, doubts, anxiety, confusion, frustration. New things will come. Welcome all that shows up, and don’t resist it. It will make the process flow a lot smoother. Eventually, you will get to a point where you can be ok with the beautiful range of emotions and dynamics life has to offer.
  • You begin to feel like you’re actually in your visions, so when you come out of your visualization session – you have a heightened awareness of yourself, others and reality. You’re more aware of the specific times doubts and fears are causing your own hesitation and avoidance. You’re more aware of your emotions and what’s causing them. You’re more aware of how your eating is affecting your mood/emotions (hopefully!). You’re more aware of when your emotions change. You’re more aware of what’s around you. You’re aware of the small decisions you’re making to either bring aligned things in. You’re more aware of the energy it’s draining to tolerate misalignments.
  • Even if you’ve been aware of all of the above, misalignments start to irritate you more than usual…a lot more. It becomes mandatory to create and enforce boundaries to that which is misaligned. You can feel it.
  • Trust and believe there will be a process that will show up. You might not even realize it’s a process until after you’ve gone through it. You have to trust and be willing to go step by step.
  • If you dare to dream big here, be aware of validation seeking – where you’re trying to prove to other people your vision can be real. Less defense, more surrender. Share your vision with someone who is aligned with it and could support it and make it happen…or at least move you to the next step. I find it best to share it with someone who’s already been down the exact (or very similar) path and come out the other side. They’ll do a much better job of showing you how that looks on earth for real and grounding what feels like a big dream in the sky. I’ve also seen sharing it with a supportive audience work too. They can point you to the person (or group of people) that have been through the process.
Neediness In Crypto Investing 150 150 admin

Neediness In Crypto Investing

On September 17, 2020 I received a free airdrop of 400 Uniswap tokens (UNI).  At the time of this writing, this has been the most popular airdrop to date in the crypto space.  The day I received the airdrop, the price of Uniswap was goin all over the place.  That day it was swinging at $3-$8 and ended up stabilizing around $5.  This was my first airdrop so…I thought to myself “Oh my god, free money!” and sold those 400 coins almost immediately for $1400.  I was pretty happy.

Fast forward to today (249 days later) Uniswap’s price is selling at $24.24.  Those 400 coins I sold would have been worth $9,696 had I kept them.  3 weeks ago Uniswap reached its all-time high and was valued at #44.92…so 3 weeks ago 400 Uniswap coins were worth $17,968.

Deep in the Telegram and Discord channels of different crypto coins you’ll see wild success stories and some not-so-successful ones too.

Approaching the Market

The past “me” might have beat myself up over the decision to sell those 400 coins early.  The “me” now sees so many paths to $20,000 that it doesn’t bother me as much.  The main lesson I learned was how I approach the market can affect my results and the experience overall.

I don’t believe there are any accidents.  If I’m honest with myself, I can say I sold those coins early because that’s the amount I was comfortable receiving.  At the time, I was used to receiving amounts close to $1000, but not anything close to $17,968 at all at one time.  I was used to making $800 / week working my regular job and Door Dash on the weekends.  Attracting anything above $1000 at once was way out of my comfort zone.  If I had been earning $20,000+ checks outside of the crypto space, then I would have just left that 400 coins alone.  It wouldn’t have been that big of a deal to me, and I would have given those 400 coins the time and space to grow and mature financially.

The Real Work in Investing

It made me realize that the real back-end work to investing is becoming comfortable receiving the amount of money I want from an investment OUTSIDE of that particular investment.  That way, I don’t approach any particular income stream or investment with a sense of neediness.  I wouldn’t need an investment to go up in value during my specific timeline.  It can be fun, playful, and light vs serious and stressful when a coin doesn’t do what I want it to.

If I want a million dollars from an investment, am I comfortable receiving a million dollars outside of that investment?   Would I be comfortable or ok with receiving a million dollars all at once in my day-to-day life?  If not, then a million dollars all at once might stress me the fuck out.  There was a time where after hearing that I would have been like “yeah right…give me a million dollars and see if I’m stressed out”.  It gets real though.  I’m in Telegram groups where a few people’s $100-$1000 investments are all of a sudden worth anywhere from $10K to $300k.  I see the hate and jealousy that gets thrown their way.  I see that owning a coin that shoots up in value could be stressful depending on the way they frame it.  Do you sell that coin and cash out only to see it rise 80X more in value?  Do you hold it and watch it crash to ground in value?  Do you go half and half?

  • If you do cash out…how much (if any) do you give to others?  What about homeless people you see on the street?  What about charities?
  • If you don’t cash out… are you watching the charts 24/7 to see when you should sell or what the price is currently?  Stressed when the number goes down, euphoric when it goes up?

I looked at the definition of trauma – a deeply distressing or disturbing experience.  It’s weird to think that having a lump sum of money placed in your lap can be distressing, but I can see it now.  Add to this the fact that many of those people who’ve seen their coins skyrocket in value don’t know wtf their investing in, and it was just a lucky gamble or a call from someone who does know about that coin.

Security is an Illusion

Nothing is static.  This includes investments, the value of money, the trends of different markets, etc.  There’s no need to let those fluctuations manipulate your emotions – but they will if you’re needing investments to somehow “save you” from looking at other parts of life you don’t want to address – like the job you hate that you can’t take a break from and/or the time and effort it might take to learn a skill that’s more valuable to the marketplace and one that is more enjoyable and provides you with more fulfillment.

One of the reasons the crypto space is shaking things up is people are waking up to the fact that the security they thought they had in money is being yanked from under them.  The USD has continued to decline in value while Bitcoin and Ethereum and other cryptocurrencies have risen in value over their short history.  Printing money out of thin air doesn’t help the cause for the security-in-money case. In the long term I can see the writing on the wall for fiat money.  In the short term, I don’t know wtf this shit gonna do.

I’ve noticed friends try to approach me looking for me to give them a sense of security in their crypto investments in the short term.  I decline that responsibility.  The best I can do is invite you to  be an active participant in learning about your crypto investment and also explore the idea that the best security is to learn to not need security as much…kind of like the real work in investing is learning to not need investments.  ?

BTW…This is not financial advice, and I am not a financial advisor.  I learned to say that from the Youtubers.

Writing From the Heart 150 150 admin

Writing From the Heart

This blog post (the one you’re reading right now) and this blog post were written a little differently than normal.  Before writing the one you’re currently reading, I had a 20 minute visualization session, so I feel like I’m pretty in my heart now.  The other blog post was written by purposely trying to center my head an my heart for 10 minutes.  You can do this by focusing on and feeling gratitude.

This is method is mentioned in this article from heartmath.org.  From that article:

The feeling of genuine appreciation is one of the most concrete and easiest positive emotions for individuals to self-generate and sustain for long periods. Nearly all of us can find something to genuinely appreciate. By simply recalling a time when you felt sincere appreciation and then re-creating that feeling, you can increase your heart-rhythm coherence, reduce emotional stress and improve your health. (Coherence here refers to a balance or smoothness in heart rhythms.)

Even from those two articles of my 100+ articles, I can tell there’s a difference in the writing.  Writing from the head is facts and logic.  Writing from the heart is more emotional and connection focused.  Weaving them both together gives you the best of both worlds.  It also makes the writing flow more and is more enjoyable to actually do.

This Chart was a Big Deal For Me 150 150 admin

This Chart was a Big Deal For Me

There was a point when I was watching the movie The Secret where they showed this chart below.

Kinda hard to read, but the top half (good feelings) reads love, gratitude, joy, passion, happiness / excitement, joyful expectation, hope, satisfaction in that order.  Then the bottom half (not-so-good feelings) reads boredom, annoyance, worry, blame, anger, revenge, hate, resentment, guilt, depression, fear.

When I saw this chart in the The Secret it was one of those moments where it hit me like a ton of bricks.  Up until that point, most of my life, I had feelings from the bottom half.  One big motive of this DVD I was watching was getting me to the top half.  I felt like it was asking me “what do you need to do to feel more feelings on the top half”.  I’ll never forget that moment because it was very eye-opening and very relieving.  I could stop beating myself down with all these negative emotions.

Are you beating yourself down with any of these negative feelings?  At the time I saw this chart, out of all the good, top half emotions, I felt that gratitude was the easiest to shift into. I could be thankful I had two eyes and could walk and other simple things that I take for granted on a daily basis, and I could just sit in that for a while.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BuMGycUhrcO/

Worry is Too Much Future 150 150 admin

Worry is Too Much Future

In times like these, a normal reaction is to panic or worry but…

“All negativity is caused by an accumulation of psychological time and denial of the present. Unease, anxiety, tension, stress, worry – all forms of fear – are caused by too much future, and
not enough presence. Guilt, regret, resentment, grievances, sadness, bitterness, and all forms
of nonforgiveness are caused by too much past, and not enough presence.” – Eckhart Tolle

This does not mean we sit on our hands and breathe deeply and meditate while things collapse around us.  It means we can be here and now and take effective action.  We can find the truth, connect with our sense of love for what is and use the power that is within us individually to take effective action collectively.

 

 

Feel The Embarrassment to Help 150 150 admin

Feel The Embarrassment to Help

Embarrassment is commonly looked at as something to be avoided. When you share embarrassing stories, there’s a possibility people can take those stories and keep them and have a “one up” on you.  I’ve seen people be vulnerable enough to share their embarrassing stories, only to have someone else bring their embarrassing story back up to bring them down a notch.  This is cheap.  It’s tacky.  And what that person who brings it back up doesn’t realize is how tacky and cheap they look doing it.  It says more about them (the person that uses it to bring them down).

When I started sharing my story in my 12-step program, it made me not care so much about situations like the one mentioned above or anything else negative that can come from being embarrassed or sharing embarrassing stories.  I saw the meaning in my embarrassment when people would connect with me after I shared, and call me on the phone. I saw how it changed the people around me for the good.  If nothing else, it raised awareness. My sponsor would tell me “just remember…it’s not about you”.  It was about a person I could help.  I saw the importance of helping just one person.  That person can create some huge ripples…and you never know who it will be.

Share your failures.  Share the things that don’t put you in such a great light.  Share your embarrassing stories.  Be willing to be publicly embarrassed.  You’ll be surprised at the people who are watching to learn and grow and raise their awareness.  I think you’ll also be surprised at the different ways it can raise you up as well.

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