43- Weekly Wrap Up

Okay — a lot of awesomeness this week. But I’ll tell you, it’s really hard coming back juggling work and responsibilities after spending an entire week at a mindfulness center focusing on building long-term mindfulness practices.    I don’t like vacations because I don’t have a life I want to vacate from. I have a life I want to enhance, so throughout the year I invest in myself to learn about something new, whether that’s a new skill or a deep practice.   Spending a week focusing on mindfulness helps me practice mindfulness in my daily life. That doesn’t mean it’s easy, but what it does is it gives me a reflecting diving board. It forces me to readjust and think anew about what’s important and reprioritize my life.   It forces me to really think about how I’m spending my time. It always gets me to really think about what words am I choosing to say and what actions I choose to act upon.    So, this week reflects a few of the thoughts that have been on my mind since coming back from Blue Spirit in Costa Rica.    1. Wasting Time   It’s incredible to me how time works. Some moments in our lives are as quick as a gust of air and other moments can freeze in place for a lifetime.    Joseph Campbell reminds us that we must give up the life we have planned in order to experience the life that is waiting for us.   So, as I look at my life plan and see my dream board that’s posted on my office wall, I need to realize that those destinations are not nearly as important as the journey I’m on right now.   And if they don’t come true, that’s okay. Because something far greater could come true, something beyond what we could even imagine right now.   2. Mindful Writing   I’ve identified three writing prompts that could help one be more mindful.  It helps a person discover their surrounding and often sparks beautiful creativity.   1. The Beat Word Sketch   Call upon your inner Miles Davis and write with a jazz beat that quickly takes in your surrounding and describes your sensory experience.    2. Focus Freewrite    - Choose a prompting question and then run with it, then train the brain to recognize when the mind has wandered of it’s focus.   3. Straight up journaling that may just be what Anne Lamott calls your shitty first draft. It’s just catharsis splattered with ink. Kind of like if Oprah and Jackson Pollock were to have made a painting.   3. Your Unfair Advantage   My buddy Scott does a great job of breaking down the six traits to find your unfair advantage.     Experience Skill Tallent Knowledge Character Connections   Finding your unfair advantage is not so much about taking advantage of people, but rather the unique gift that you can offer which no one else in the world can.   It’s your art and it’s freaking beautiful. Let it shine.   4, Finding Genius    We’re all geniuses in some way, but not everyone finds it.   To find it, you need to look beyond what the classroom and school typically asked of you. Genius isn’t about memorizing data or performing a task faster than everyone else. It’s not found in a test.     Genius, on the other hand, can be broken down into two separate tracks Genius 1 is better, stronger, or faster than anyone else and Genius 2 thinks so differently that society can’t do anything else but turn their heads in awe.