Tag Archives: Albert Einstein

#51 – EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW TO HAVE A HAPPIER, MORE CREATIVE LIFE FROM A TO Z! PART 3

Posted on December 19, 2011 by Anthony

J = Joy.

Our natural state of being is joy. But you’re often your own thief of your own joyful experience. You rob from yourself that which is innately yours. Thankfully, joy is a never-ending commodity and it can’t be diminished entirely. But you do compromise it when you continue to re-write history and tell yourself stories that are not only blatantly untrue, but also make you feel like shit about yourself. Stop it. Tell a story of joy instead.

K = Kinesthetic.

Learning by doing. Get in the game of life. Stop sitting on the sidelines bitching, complaining and bemoaning. You learn by doing. Try. Crash. Burn. Do things that scare you. Attempt. Fail. This is not only a kinesthetic experience, it’s an experience of being alive.

L = Laughter.

Keep things in perspective. Stop taking everything so seriously. As long as you’re moving forward and experiencing new things in your life, being challenged and moving beyond your comfort zone – there’s progress. Celebrate what’s working. Stop being so dramatic about what’s not.

M = Mistakes.

Make them. The younger you are the easier it is to do that. As you get older it gets scarier because you become invested in what you’ve become, how you’re perceived, what you earn, what’s your identity and what you’ve created. These illusions can trap us into not taking risks because we’ve become so identified with the stuff we’ve amassed. Be like a kid: scab your knee, overreach, get yourself into a pickle. You’ll discover that you’ll survive.

N = Navigator.

You are the pilot and the co-pilot. You are setting the path and driving the vehicle. You have your own inner GPS system. If you don’t like the co-ordinates you are putting into your system, change them! No one is making you take the paths you don’t want to drive down. You decide where you want to go and you start moving in that direction. Follow your heart. Be a rebel.

O = Occam’s Razor.

The law of economy, the law of succinctness. The law of simplicity.

Which means, the simplest explanation for something is generally the correct explanation for something that may seem to have many hypothesis. The answer that has the least amount of assumptions is usually the truth. Stop assuming worst-case scenarios and doom-and-gloom stories about your life.

The agent didn’t sign you. It doesn’t mean you sucked.
You didn’t get the call-back. It doesn’t mean there’s something wrong with you.
The agent didn’t sign you because you reminded him of his ex-girlfriend.
You didn’t get the call-back because they already made an offer to someone else.

K. I. S. S. = Keep. It. Simple. Silly.

P = Purpose.

The purpose-driven life? Not sure what that is. I know it’s a best-selling book. Your life already has purpose. Purpose is created by showing up in our own lives more totally. More fully. It’s created by being more present with what’s in front of us right now. It’s not about being with someone and also answering our phone and responding to texts and sending emails and tweeting and watching an episode of 30 Rock and worrying about what’s going to happen in the future. It’s not about placing ego demands on yourself that you have to change the world or become famous or make millions of dollars.

True purpose transcends the ego-labeling of what we do as a career or how we define ourselves or the descriptions of what we do. Purpose is created in the minutiae of the moment. And it changes moment-to-moment. But we’re constantly missing the calling of purpose because we’re so distracted by our ego needs of, “How do I look?” “Will this sell” “Am I popular?” “What will they think of me?”

Mother Teresa said it best: “Let no one come to you without leaving happier and better.”

Holy crap. If you can just do that with every interaction you have in life, your life will rip open right in front of you, your ego demands will fall away, you’ll stop focusing on the ego self and its fears and maintenance of the status quo and your life would become one of the most joyful celebrations you could ever imagine.

Now that’s purpose!

“If the facts don’t fit the theory, change the facts.” ~ Albert Einstein


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#37 – DO WE EVER ESCAPE HIGH SCHOOL? YES! BY BECOMING MORE INTERNALLY REFERENCED

Posted on September 12, 2011 by Anthony

Do we ever graduate from school?

The wanting to be liked? Or popular? Or more attractive? Or more “cool?”

At one level – no –  because what everyone struggles with as adults are the same core issues that high school traumas (like surviving lunch period!) brought up for us: thinking that we’re not good enough or we’re inadequate or flawed in some way. We’re not worthy or desirable. We’re weird or unlovable.

What you are feeling is what everyone else is feeling. You’re not living in a vacuum.

When actors go into an audition room, they incorrectly think they’re the only ones who feel insecure. Everyone in the room is! We all have the same vulnerabilities. It may seem like the people making the decisions have the power but we’re all on equal footing here. At a business level, they need you as much as you need them. And at a core human level everyone wants to be liked and understood. Everyone wants to be seen and heard. Everyone is trying to do their best. And just like you’re wanting the casting director to like you – they’re answering to producers. Who are in turn answering to a director. Who in turn might be answering to a company.

The key to it all this is to learn to become more internally referenced. You’re never going to get out of that high school lunchroom if you keep looking outside yourself for the answers or the confirmation or the support or the love or the appreciation. First of all, “out there” is a reflection of “in here.” So what you are seeking out there is something you aren’t fulfilling for yourself internally.

People are fickle. Why? Because they’re (especially in this business) externally referenced. Judgments are made by your last job or how you look or how skinny you are or how much money you make or how young you are or hot or who you know. But those things change. You’re on top today; tomorrow you’re fired. Your show is cancelled. If you’re identity is based on the external, what happens when the externals are taken away?

If you’re waiting to hear it from your husband or your teacher or your lover or your coach or your mother or your best friend or your kids or your peers – it’s possible you may never hear it. Or what you do hear won’t be enough. Or it won’t be said the way you want to hear it. You have to give this to yourself first.

Work toward doing it for you. Work toward applauding you. Work toward the validation and acceptance and love and support coming from you. (And ironically, when you do that, you’ll begin to see it starting to show up more often in your external world.)

If other people give it to you – well golly! – that’s a nice bonus. If they don’t, it won’t be the end of the world.

Because the true victories in life are in conquering the noise in our heads that take us back to high school lunchroom periods over and over again.

“Any man who can drive safely while kissing a pretty girl is simply not giving the kiss the attention it deserves.” — Albert Einstein

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