1. A Personal Challenge
2. Thoughts on Gangster Rap
3. Staring at Walls for Long Periods of Time
4. No More Easy Mode

Harsh Reality from Harsh Coaches

“We need more people willing to accept the consequences”

• Josh the Coach
  

Now this dude was a bit… let’s call him ‘unconventional’. He was a bit of a riot. He calls you on your bullshit. He challenges you. He doesn’t put up with excuses and firmly believes you just ‘deal with things’. He doesn’t hide behind who he is and he was always unapologetically himself. He’s genuine. Sometimes that rubs people the wrong way. But he wasn’t afraid to hide who he was. I found this idea incredibly moving.

Thought: Rap has a Bad Rap

It seems like Rap music gets so much flack. “It’s just a bunch of people talking about bitches and money” which, fair that’s a good portion.

But when you sit down and really listen to the lyrics of some of the greats it’s some of the most powerful stuff I’ve heard. Rap is people trying to deal with their problems and understand the world. Isn’t that every type of creative expression? This just seems to be another type of outlet.

J. Cole? So dang good. Surprisingly hopeful and positive hidden behind explicit lyrics and hard beats. So you can be philisophical and enjoy music with your friends.

Once you sit down and genuinely understand what these people are saying, holy smokes is it powerful.

Middle Child

“Spending they birthdays inside of a cell
We coming from a long bloodline of trauma
We raised by our mamas, Lord we gotta heal
We hurting our sisters, the babies as well
We killing our brothers, they poisoned the well
Distorted self image, we set up to fail
I’ma make sure that the real gon’ prevail”

A Video a Good Friend Sent Me

Overstimulation is Ruining Your Life

From this 13 minute video, I watched about half and had to go sit in an empty room and just stare at the wall. It made me pause and reflect about how I truly spend my time.

We’ve got so much going on all the time. The internet is able to single-handedly satiate all of our desires and it is overwhelming. The video made me realize though that our best thoughts come when we take some fricking time to think.

Deliberate boredom can be used to switch our minds into creative mode and start reflecting and dreaming. (Plus, the video gave me an excuse to do nothing and oh boy was that exhilarating)

After those 13 minutes I now make a conscious effort to do nothing. The video gave me the permission to not distract. Silence is powerful.

And the resulting reflection is peaceful.

Friendly Reminder to Not Live on Auto-Pilot

I saw this picture the other day and it made me laugh. Unfortunately, this statistic from .gov didn’t:

Too many of us are living life on easy-mode and it’s making us unhappier. It’s negatively affecting our own lives, hurting the people we love, and ultimately causing regret in the wrong one. Challenge yourself. Have you been on auto-pilot?