As we rush headlong into a brand new year and finally put 2021 to rest, there’s something that’s been on my mind.
I have a great friend who I got the chance to catch up with recently and it was an interesting conversation.
He and his family spent the last 8 years in Central America, and they had some amazing adventures. They moved back to the United States several months ago and he had some really specific observations.
Aside from telling me he was dumbstruck when walking into a Super Walmart for the first time in almost a decade (really who needs that many varieties of barbecue sauce!?)
He asked me this: “Josh, dude, I sit out on the porch and can see the main road from here, where the hell is everyone going all the time?”
It made me take a minute to consider it.
Where the hell are we going all the time? Are you, like so many other people right now, just going through the motions?
Are you just doing the things you’ve been programmed to do on autopilot and not thinking about the intention behind what you’re doing?
Are you working on the never ending hamster wheel going around in circles and getting nowhere?
I’ve lived that truth myself and finally shook off the haze and started taking deliberate actions with passion and intention and it changed my life.
So I would love for you to do me a favor that’s helped me each and every day since I started doing it.
Get a small journal, it doesn’t have to be a novel, but every morning jot down the thing you have to do on that day. Then write down the intention and purpose, it might be a little difficult at first but the more you do it, the easier it will get.
Then when you’re done with your day, take a look back on the things you wrote that morning and try to find out where you were continuing to do things with intention and where you might have gone on autopilot.
When you first start this practice, you might only have one or two things that you did during that day that you remember with intention, and more often than not you’ll find that you got off track as the world and life got in your way.
That’s completely ok, because as you make this practice become habit you’ll find that more and more you’re being fully present and going through your day with the power of purpose and intention behind you.
Another little trick I do every day comes straight from the movie Pretty Woman. When Richard Gere finally starts to become present in his own world and takes off his shoes and walks in the grass “making fists with his toes.”
I don’t do exactly that, but the sentiment is the same. Throughout your day take a minute or two as you have them all along to notice the world around you.
The people, your surroundings, focus all around you and really look at where you are in the world. Take a couple deep breaths, see nature and your fellow humans.
We spend far too much time “hustling” and trying to be hyper-productive but you’ll be amazed at just stopping throughout your day and truly seeing the things around you will do for you in the long run.
In 1802 the poet, William Wordsworth wrote “The World Is Too Much With Us”
In the first stanza he says:
“The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;—
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!”
If that was true and observable all the way back in 1802, then just imagine how much worse it is for us in our modern, on-demand, 24 hour digital world?
Let me know in the comments below how you go through your day with the power of purpose and passion in your life, and I’ll see you in January with the next installment of your Weekly Dopamine Dose!
Joshua B. Lee
P.S. Remember, we’ll be having our very first Community Call of 2022 is coming up soon on January 18th and we’ll be discussing all the best, most exciting predictions for your business and your life going into 2022! If you haven’t, sign up right here and join us then.
