web analytics

Stephen Pickering

Tag: self-help

  • Three Pieces of Great Life Advice I Gleaned From Twitter Today

    Sounds weird right? Twitter is the negative capital of the world it would seem. It seems almost like a magnet for negativity and arguing. Boy, I spent too much of my life during the last decade engaging in both, and still do at times, although I’m much more conscious of it.

    #1 Chase Jarvis. I swear there are days, and today was one of them when I said to myself, I need to unfollow everyone on Twitter except for Chase Jarvis. He’s all you need! He’s like Bob Proctor 2.0 except he specializes in the Creative career. If you really wanted to turn your life around, and especially if your dream was to be a creative (artist, writer, painter, photographer, movie-maker, actually in today’s world creativity can be applied to any career) I think listening to Chase Jarvis non-stop would do the trick. I’m certain it would.

    #2 This was an unlikely source and for an unlikely and controversial reason, but I thought the main point he made was so golden. It was from Tim Brando, a former Sports Broadcaster, who was really pissed off about the way the leadership in Athletics at the collegiate level has been so poor in the face of COVID-19. At any rate, and I do trust his judgement on such issues, but I know that point could be debated, but I thought his immediate cure was self-help gold:
    “Do what you love. Get your mind off what pisses you off!” It may not sound sexy, but it works!

    #3 Dolly Parton. Actually this one isn’t from twitter. I heard it last night, but I can’t remember from where, but I thought it really hit home. “Find out what you are good at, and do it on purpose.” It sounds too simple to be true, but that one sentence is almost all you need to know to not only be happy in life (if you are good at it, it’s usually something you enjoy in and of itself) and also make a good living that provides at the very least for your food and shelter and more than likely for a whole lot more.

  • What Joseph Campbell Meant by Following Your Bliss

    Only work at something, only devote your career/life to something that gives you pleasure in and of itself [even the nitty gritty of the process lights you up] absent money or fame.

  • The Best Romantic Relationship Books According to Whitney Cummings

    • Getting to ‘I Do’ by Pat Allen — [Google Search Link]
    • Getting the Love You Want by Harville Hendrix [Link]
    • Cupid’s Poisoned Arrow by Marnia Robinson [Link]

    This info was shared from Whitney’s appearance on Nikki Glaser’s Sirius XM show “You Up,” which is a lot of fun to watch in and of itself.

  • The Secret of Success: Having Fun

    I’m having a blast. It’s really fun. I don’t know why… But it’s just been a joy.

    Conan O’Brien Jan. 12, 2020, “Nikki Glaser” 1:12

    Why were you trying to find my extension?
    I have a friend who’s opening up a new restaurant in Soho and I was hoping you’d go with me.
    What?
    Do you want to go out with me tonight?
    Why?
    Because it would be fun, and you seem cool.

    30 Rock S1 E11 4:39
    “Did you ever imagine that your podcast would be…like where its at right now is crazy, man.”
    Joe Rogan: “No, there’s no way I could have imagined it. I wouldn’t have believed it.”
    Tom Segura: “It’s so nuts.”
    Joe Rogan: “It’s just…yeah, I just thought it was fun to do.”

    Let me ask you something, why do you do what you do?
    I don’t know. The only time I really feel alive is when I’m singing

    Jennifer Hudson’s character in ‘Sandy Wexler’ [-1:55:54].

    Johnny Cash is not cast in amber, this is the guy before he was canonized, when he was just a musician, when he had runway in front of him and was less worried about getting it right than just doing it. Yup, when done right music is here and then gone, you had to be there, that’s one of the reasons live is such a big deal these days.

    — Bob Lefsetz https://lefsetz.com/wordpress/2019/12/04/matchbox/

    “And one does it not to be good for you, but just because you dig it. Because at last you find yourself in the center, the eternal now, in which past and future drop away, in which divisions created by words drop away.” — [YouTube Link]

    Alan Watts

    Something I do for like no reason besides the fact that it was just like for fun………Mmmm mmmm, I mean because making music is messing around. [Youtube Interview Link]

    Billie Eilish

    You’ve got to find something that you love to do in an of itself that could also become a career. I would even go a step further: the actual doing of it and navigating all of its challenges (like an adventure) actually gives you more pleasure, feeds your soul even more, or if you want to get unromantically scientific about it, releases even more dopamine, than all the other possible accoutrements it could give you (money, fame, sex, adoration).
    That’s a big ask. But I think it’s the key to not only giving yourself the best shot at not only the accoutrements, but producing work that is worthy of them. In another words, work that gives more value to the audience (and keep in mind, especially in today’s world this could literally be anything: arts, business, science, etc.) than the money and attention they are giving to it. This is the key fundamental law of business: B = V + D. Business equals Value plus Distribution. But it’s an equation that can be applied to any career. And thanks to the internet, or more robustly “technology” the definition of what a career can be (“Youtube Star”) has grown at least by an order of magnitude over what it was when I graduated from college in 1989, maybe two.

  • My Favorite Bob Proctor Quotes

    I could listen to this guy 24×7. There’s almost nothing this guy says that doesn’t “Light Me Up.” And by the way, that’s a very simple, yet enormously effective way of discerning your Dharma and following your bliss. Start to notice the things in your life that “Light You Up.” Those are clues, the keys, the signs showing your the way as to why you are here.

    • “In absence of clearly-defined Goals, we become strangely loyal to performing daily trivia, until ultimately we become enslaved by it.” –
      [Youtube Link to Bob saying it] – {Actually this quote is from Robert Heinlein, but I hear Bob say it so much as part of his talks, and it resonates with me so much in terms of changing your Psychology as to what is the centerpiece of your life.}

  • How to Find Your Purpose Part 2: Becoming and Worthiness

    And I realized that when you set yourself on a path to really follow your heart’s desires, the dreams that you were born with, the dreams that are deepest in your genotype tend to find you or you find them. – Martha Beck

     

    “The key is you’ve gotta do what speaks to your soul, what puts you into a ‘peak’ state.” – Carl Harvey – The Big Life Show

    Becoming and Worthiness

    I’ve had a revelation or realization just now while I was working on a song. It envolves two ideas: 1. Becoming 2. Worthiness. And the two ideas are interconnected. First, let’s talk about the process of “Becoming.” I’ve heard Joseph Campbell as well as Buddhist literature refer to this word. Joseph Campbell calls it the “burning point.”

    Here’s the central thesis: Whatever field or endeavor you choose to be engaged in, are you comfortable being there, happy being inside of it, inside this world or activity, even when things aren’t going right or well? Because you love the process so much, in and of itself, that you actually look forward to the challenge of problems that are inherent in this field of activity?

    If so, that’s a big sign that this is your calling or purpose in life.

    Also you know that just being in the process will spontaneously produce unexpected upside results. For instance working on this song the last couple of days, there have been times when it felt great and other times that it didn’t feel like it was good, and its still not finished, but I know that staying with the process through the up and down feeling is when the unexpectedly great lyric seems to come out of nowhere, or my voice unexpectedly achieves notes, depths, and vibrato that I didn’t know I was capable of, until it happens.

    So, its the doing of something that is the best teacher of how to do it.

    That leads me to the second idea of “Worthiness.” So often I stopped with a creative idea, whether it be in writing or music, because it didn’t seem to be going well. This lead to a feeling of “unworthiness” to continue.

    But if its something that’s really your calling or “why you are here,” then the Ego falls away and you lose your discouragement because you know that you are doing your best and that you are just as “Worthy” as anyone to be engaged in this endeavor.

    The word “talent” is meaningless and a totally misleading idea. People who are successful in any field get good at what they do by doing it, and doing it, and doing it. Not by starting out by knowing how to do it.

    And therein lies another key: Pleasure. Take any activity that could become a career, no matter where your results lie on a scale say, between 1 and 10, if you get pleasure out of the activity itself, then you’re going to engage in the activity long enough to where your results improve and keep improving.

    You’ll become so good that you can make a career out of this activity, and you would be inside your “bliss station” all the time as well.

    You have all the patience in the world to stick with it because deep inside you don’t want to leave this field. So you lose your anxiety about things being “not quite right” about a piece you are working on. The challenge actually thrills you.
    Because you get to keep playing in the field.

    And that’s where the adventure begins.

    You’re not worried about accomplishment: That’s an Ego identification.

    When you’ve found your bliss, the ego drops away, and its all and only about being inside this certain field.