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This is the First Day of a Life Worth Living

This guest post was written by IvanPerez,  you can follow him on twitter here.

Soundtrack:

“Do you know what’s the difference between me and you? You practice gymnastics, I practice everything!” Socrates, Peaceful Warrior (2006)

My whole life, or at least as long as I remember, I’ve always had this obsession with improving and being better. Mix that with being raised as the kid that everyone considered  ”the most intelligent” for many years and with my huge curiosity and you can understand why I do what I do. There you have positive social conditioning at its best, but that’s for another blog.

I think one day I tasted the power of deciding to overcome some challenge and improve, focusing on it and getting it, and it became my drug – that, and chocolate ;-) . That’s the reason why as a kid I was reading lots of pages a day, why I started doing wushu when I was five, why I’ve always had such good marks, why I got into hunting, why I went from chode to the cool guy, why I started this blog, why I got into a lot of stuff (Meditation, Self-Help, Uncluttering, Organizing…), why I plan such big things for my life and, most importantly, why I live everyday as the first and the last day of my life.

Life as a journey of challenges is one of my core values, its just part of me. That way, I know no matter what I want to do, if there’s only a tiny possibility of accomplishing it – even if it seems impossible – I will do it. Because, like they say: In the way you do anything, you do everything. 

In this beautiful day, with this beautiful background music, I’m here to inspire you. Yeah, surprise… I want you to live a memorable life, a life capable of inspiring people. Only those individual that love themselves enough will start their new life. This is a life of excellence, of continual improvement and expansion, this is a life of mastery and the mastery of life. Because mastery is a lifelong process, the more you live, the longer mastery will take you. Mastery is about neither starting nor stopping, but about doing. 

Yeah, that would be cool, but how do I get there?

As anyone who’s into self-improvement knows, the mindset you have (what you believe, what you value, what you favor) is going to influence your actions in a way that most people wouldn’t believe. Now I’m going to give you things that help me get to that mindset, and stay there. I’m sure you have some more, so comment.

 

Some pointers that will, hopefully, lead you to this mindset. At least that is what I intend to do with this article:

It’s about the journey, not the destination.
Why? Because if you choose to live this way there’s no destination. Deadlines are only mental concepts. Don’t get me wrong, it’s good to have goals (that’s the whole point of this post). The journey, this moment, is everything you have make it fun. Improving rather than the improvement, taking action rather than getting the goal.

Focusing on something and making it a reality is beautiful.
If that’s not art, then what is? Focus on what you want, not on what you don’t want.
“The mind is everything. What you think you become.” Buddha

By changing the world we are confirming our condition as humans.
We people have the great gift of being the only creatures on Earth that are capable of changing their surroundings. Use that gift with responsibility.

Your real power lies in your use of responsiblity.
Your responsibility for what happens, your will. It’s the only thing that will never be taken away from you.

You don’t know when you are going to die.

The passion of life.

In improvement, there’s abundance; from stagnation you can only get scarcity. Let go.

There are heros outside comics and films.
There are real life heros, and you can be one of them.

Here are some questions you may ask yourself in order to reveal that place inside your self that is centered, your CORE (if you want to get the most out of this, write the answers down):

  • If I was going to die in X what would I do? Think of short periods of time: one year, 6 months, 10 weeks, 3 days, 20 minutes…
  • What do I really want for myself?
  • Am I happy or I just think I should feel happy?
  • What excites me?
  • What is my dream?

Conclusion

This is a life of continual centeredness responsibility, inspiration and leadership. And this, my friends, is the best way I can explain what being alpha and being a man is. It’s not about improving, it’s about going for the improvement. It’s not about the results, it’s about living on the edge.

Some people live like this everyday, they feel something when they wake up that tells them today is going to be the best day of their lives, and that is every day. It’s the feeling of centeredness and not noticing people’s bullshit that arises from feeling that you could die the next second. Conciously experiencing every second is just natural from this mindset.

Life has no meaning, you have to give it a meaning. You’ve earned your respect and trust, you just love yourself. I would rather die than living any other way.

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March 12th, 2009 | Category: Identity, Motivation | 32 comments

Creative Expression: The Forgotten Skill

Creative Expression is IMO a sorely underdiscussed topic in both the self-help and seduction communities.  Creative expression can roughly be described as anything that is not direct communication which conveys who you are.   In the video, I give some basic principles and steps to take when learning to creatively express yourself through a new medium, as well as examples.   Below, I’ll give a quick outline for those of you who like reading more than watching.  I understand that the video is sucky… I’m still new at this vlogging stuff :) .

1.Start With First Principles
Start with those most basic rules which have been developed for your medium, which apply to everyone who is a master… you must work WITHIN those principles to express yourself.
2.Find a Role Model that You Connect With
Once you have found the first principles, the next step is to find a role model who’s style of expression resonates with you.  Straight out imitation is okay at this point, as you’ll become more unique as you go through the next stages.
3. Find Moments of Brilliance
The next step is to take the baseline style that you have created, and look for places where you go ABOVE your current level.  Artwork that you think is better than anything you’ve done, clothes that you like more than anything else in your wardrobe, etc.  Extract personal principles of expression from these, and apply it to new pieces of art, new clothes, etc.
4.Increase Detail
Now, you use the same three techniques above but with increased detail. Instead of just the basics, you’re starting to layer things together in ways that are uniquely you.
5. Add Flair
Now you add the finishing touches.  Those tiny little details that tie everything else together.  At this point, your expression should be completely unique.
6. Upgrade
Now it’s time to start at the beginning again.  Look at your original baseline for even deeper moments of brilliance. Then do the same thing for detail, then for flair.  Remember not to skip anything here… you don’t want to upgrade your flair, only to find that it doesn’t fit with your upgraded baseline.
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February 24th, 2009 | Category: Identity, Life Hacks, Relationships and Communication | 11 comments

On… those “Off days”

So, you’re having one of those “off days”.  Maybe you didn’t get enough sleep.  Maybe somebody said something and it brought up old insecurities.  Maybe you just woke up on the wrong side of the bed.  Whatever the case, you find yourself slipping back into old emotions and thought patterns, not being able to make eye contact, being clumsy and meek again, instead of the assured confident person you have worked so hard to become.

And you’re killing yourself over it.  You hate it.  You struggle harder and harder to pull yourself out of the slump.  You fix your body language, you try to make some clever comments in the conversation like you normally do.  But it all just comes out forced and awkward, plunging you further into your own despair.  You try to explain why you’re not your usual self, but you know it’s not really an excuse.  The harder you try, the more awkward it becomes, and finally you’re left sitting silently, or going to the bathroom to splash cold water on your face, or going somewhere to get a moment to yourself.
And still, you’re killing yourself.  What the fuck is wrong with you? What the fuck happened? 
At least, that’s how it is for me.  I used to hate days like this, despised myself for becoming so weak again when I knew I could be stronger.  And after dozens of these days, at various points in my own growth process, I’ve come to a singular conclusion: 

It Doesn’t Matter.

Read it again, in case you missed it the first time.
It Doesn’t Matter.
It’s not a big deal, really.  It’s not going to ruin your life, it’s not going to kill you.  I used to worry about people seeing this side of me, about how their perceptions  of me would change, of what they’d think.
Then I realized something.
Noone Knows.
No one knows that there are insecure thoughts in my head.  No one notices every slight mistake I make, every little tremble in my voice.  I was putting myself deeper into insecure thoughts for nothing.  Very few people even noticed that there was any change.
There were a few tho.  A few observant ones, who would see that someone was different about me.  That I was a little less confident than I normally was… but nothing happened.  The next day, or the next week, when I was back to my normal self, there was no change, no big shift now that they had seen another side of me.  Nothing.  And I realized my second big epiphany.
Noone Cares.
All these big consequences that I had been dreaming in my head were fantasy.  Everybody has an off day sometimes, and it’s not a big deal, taken with all the positive impressions of you they have to the few off days.  People notice, then shrug it off.
And finally, there were some people who both noticed and cared.  They would worry about me, ask what was wrong, ask if it was something they did.  The people who cared that I wasn’t my usual self, cared because they cared about ME.  These were the people who were the closest to me, and for these people:
It Doesn’t Matter.

One off day is not going to change their feelings for you.  These are the people who will stick with you through thick and thin, one little off day isn’t going to change a thing.
I finally realized that by making these off days such a big deal, all I was doing was giving them power they didn’t deserve. By constantly self monitoring myself, and fighting against myself, I was just making things worse.  What started out as a molehill only became a mountain because I piled the dirt myself.  
When a day like this strikes me now, I don’t worry about it.  I accept it, I understand that things will be a bit different today.  Sometimes, if I find myself dwelling on it too much, constantly monitoring myself, I’ll try to get in a little exercise.  Do a few jumping jacks, wave my arms, go for a run.  Anything to get myself out of my head.   
Sometimes, you’ll find that what you thought was an off day was merely an opportunity to express a differet side of your personality.  Maybe you’ll be a cool, laid back guy because you have less energy.  Maybe you’ll be a crazy wacky guy because your thought patterns all over the place.  But by not fighting it, it becomes merely another form of expression.
Other times, you’ll find the weird feeling will go away completely, and you’ll be your normal self in no time.
Still other times, neither of these things will happen.  you’ll be that slightly more awkward persona you used to dread so much.  But now you know the truth: It Doesn’t Matter.  and in realizing this truth, you’ll find the problem won’t be nearly as bad as it had been in the past… a small speedbump, and nothing more.
At the end of the day, instead of beating yourself up, you can look yourself in the mirror and ask yourself the only question that really matters at this point: What can I learn from this?
And the next day, when you wake up refreshed, confident, and alert, you can back to what you do best, knowing with utter certainty that you can handle yourself even at your worst… anything else is easy.
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January 5th, 2009 | Category: Identity, Life Hacks, Motivation | 72 comments
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