Let's say that life is like a river,
and you're traveling along this river in a boat.
There are going to be parts of the river that are super calm and serene,
and you can basically just take a nap
and bask in the sunshine and all is well.
And then soon enough, you hit a rocky patch, where the water is a bit shallow, and
you gotta work a bit harder to keep moving.
There are going to be parts of the river that are pretty extreme,
such as waterfalls
or rapids that you have to learn to navigate around.
But luckily, those parts don't last forever, and you can get through them
with a certain amount of patience and skill.
Of course, everyone has a boat, they're all traveling down the river, but
if you have an oar with you, if you have a lifejacket,
a compass, a flashlight,
if you have any kind of navigation with you at all,
traveling down that river is just going to be more smooth, more seamless, more safe,
and more enjoyable altogether.
[crowd cheering]
These tools in life could be anything from
minimalism to diet
to an exercise routine, morning routine...
it could include journalling, meditation,
reading about things in books, listening to informative podcasts,
learning to perfect habits or productivity -
all of these can be tools in your arsenal -
tools in your toolbox that can help you to navigate the waters of life.
Whether you have a destination in mind that you're trying to get to,
or your entire goal is just to explore the river,
[someone cheers]
you're going to need some kind of tools to help you get there.
The thing is, if you want these tools, you have to collect them,
and you have to build them, and you have to
refine them over time, depending on how
they have worked in your previous experiences.
So if we keep the metaphor going,
if you pull your boat over to the shore, and you start working on making the best oar possible,
the best tool to navigate the water possible,
but you find yourself spending more time working on the oar
than you do actually navigating the river,
then there's a bit of an imbalance there.
And I think this is what people talk about when they say that they're "obsessed with self-development,"
or they're obsessed with minimizing all of their objects,
or all they can care about is productivity and building habits,
but they're not actually using those skillsets that they've earned,
that they've developed over time,
in the real world - to do anything.
It's good to spend time refining your tools - you don't necessarily need to just
try to navigate the river without any tools,
but honestly, I would rather navigate the river without any tools
than to only spend my life on the shore,
collecting and refining these tools that are never actually used.
The ironic thing is, if you want to create the best oar ever,
you're going to have to put it to the test at some point.
So if we think of this as a morning routine, for example:
I could sit here for hours, for days, trying to come up with the "best morning routine,"
but if I don't actually apply it to my life, and try it out,
and give it enough of a time period that I'm able to
figure out what is good about the morning routine, and what
could be improved about the morning routine,
and THEN I pull my boat back to the side of the shore and refine that tool,
and then get back out on the water and see how
well those refinements have increased the utilization of this tool -
if you don't have that balance between being on the shore and being in the water,
then you're never going to create the best oar anyways.
You need that time spent on the water to find where you're lacking
in your toolset in order to then go back and refine your toolset.
It honestly saddens me when people start to wrap their identity around
a certain diet or being highly productive
or being very organized, and yet you're not actually
applying those things to getting anything else done.
You're not actually using those things
to live your life and create joy and happiness.
You're just focused only on the tools themselves.
If you're feeling stuck, it's probably because you are
on the shoreline with your boat
[man's voice: "awwww man!"]
rather than traveling down the river.
You might find that you don't even need ANY tools,
and you have more fun living your life on the river
without any kind of special skill development,
without any kind of special routines, but living life
is so much more fulfilling than just
being on the shoreline, dreaming about living life,
saying, "someday, once I perfect this oar, I'll get back out on the river."
Just - just get back on the river now,
you can perfect your oar as yuh go.
I mean, even just these YouTube videos, if you go back and
watch my other old YouTube videos, they're
completely different than what I do now, and I'm sure that this is
gonna change in the future, too - I'm already starting to get bored with this format.
Doesn't help that I'm stuck in this apartment all the time.
It is less important that you have the correct gear,
and the "perfect" skillset,
and more important that you're actually making something,
and you're trying to apply your current skillset and
current toolbox to life.
You're going to get so much farther if you start applying as much as possible
and perfecting from there, rather than just trying to
stay over on the shore and GUESS at what the perfect tool might be.
That's it. That's all I got.
'til next time!
[click!]