I’ve never experienced it.
A lot of people talk about it, but I don’t understand.
From the time I was a child, to my teens, to my adult years.
(Note: I use “adult” loosely, I have been known to ask for crayons and drawing paper at restaurants)
The thing I have never experienced is boredom.
And I decided to rarely watch TV since age 9.
Wait, what? Boredom?
Boredom is defined as the state of dullness, tedious repetition, unwelcome attentions, etc. (dictionary.com)
More than boredom being a thing that I’ve avoided, the trick lies in my perception of boredom.
Where most see boredom, I see an opportunity.
An opportunity to learn, an opportunity to strengthen my understanding (conviction) about something, an opportunity to observe surroundings, or an opportunity to think.
That last one, thinking, is usually my default. Thinking is a muscle I’ve refined since childhood.
Metacognition has helped to elevate my thinking.
Now it’s time to share what I’ve learned over the years as it relates to the power of the mind.
DISCLAIMER: If you’re expecting to rush through this article because you have more important things to do, or you believe you’re lacking time, do yourself a favor and leave. Either go all in on this article or leave. After all, legacy is not about you, it’s about those you affect.
The role of the mind
Until I heightened my level of self-awareness, I never understood this.
I sort of did, but I couldn’t exactly articulate it. Now, I can.
The mind is the foundation of most things we experience.
The mind is responsible for our thought patterns, belief systems, inner narrative, conscious and unconscious. It affects how we think and feel and ultimately the way we experience life.
Once I understood this, most things in life seem simple.
People call it different things.
Some call it being mindful. Full of mind.
Some call it thoughtful, conscious, or awake.
Since I believe the human experience (HX) is about connection, I believe that being mindful is the same thing as being mentally connected. It’s the ability to make connections within the brain. This is part belief systems and part brain health.
I believe in the effort put forth to master your own psychology. To understand the conscious and subconscious. This takes effort. Like a great boxer in the ring, it requires leaning into the punch. It requires embracing the discomfort.
I’m not saying this because I’ve invested a lot into myself and put in the work.
I’m saying this because I exist to inspire legacy.
Legacy is about who we affect.
And guess what?
Do you think the conscious or the subconscious mind creates better impact?
Ah, yes, the conscious mind. The subconscious mind can create some dark stories (many that I’ve heard which takes time to transcend)
Why?
What we don’t transcend, we transmit.
I want you to transcend not for you, but for the impact that you create.
An analogy of the human mind
Think of your mind as your home.
Go on, imagine your ideal home, right now.
Your mind is built like a home with many different rooms. Your home may have an exercise room, kitchen, bathroom, closets, windows, beds, guest room, a front yard, a backyard, a basement.
When you are born, your mind shows up in the form of a home.
You don’t choose the city, or the state, or the block you grow up on.
In your early years, you don’t even choose the people who walk through your front door.
The mailman, the gardener, the neighbors.
Or, your parents, aunts, uncles, childhood friends, and other experiences.
This is what it means to be reactive. We require connection from childhood to survive.
The home sits.
People walk in and out.
Time passes.
Connections, created.
Some people help nurture your home.
Sometimes they keep the rooms clean, water the flowers, and introduce you to the neighbors.
Sometimes they don’t and the home starts to create disorder. Your home. Your mind.
At some point, you realize and accept that you own the home. (Or you don’t)
You realize that for all that time you were renting and the landlord helped with maintenance as best they could with where they were at with how their home was maintained.
Let me say that again.
You realize, and accept, that the people in the beginning of your home being built did the best they could, with where they were at, given how well their home was built.
At some point, you decide, intentionally or unintentionally, consciously or subconsciously, that you own the home, and you care about its upkeep.
This isn’t about maintaining the yard so the neighbors get the impression that you keep a clean home (when you know you don’t).
This is about the people who live in your home.
This is about the people you impact.
Call it self-love. Self-care. Self-growth. Self-awareness. Self-maintenance. Self-health.
It’s the realization that to truly impact others you need to first impact self.
It’s the moment you realize the potential beyond yourself.
As you begin to walk through the rooms in your home, you learn about what you see. You become self-aware of the home and you realize the importance of upkeep because it’s not about you.
Sometimes, in that process, you open the windows and trust in the sunlight that will help light up the room.
This requires trust in the light. It requires the embrace of vulnerability. The uncertainty, risk, and emotional exposure.
When you see that first light, it hits you. Like an early sunrise on the morning you’ve slept in. It wakes you up.
It radiates. It is bright. Eventually, your eyes start to open up and you begin to see the rooms in your home more clearly.
See the dust.
See the plants to water.
See the furniture that needs arranging.
At this point, you learn how to truly use your eyes.
When you learn how to use your true pair of eyes, you begin to strengthen them.
Little by little, effort is put forth.
This process is liberating.
Walk through the home and clean it up.
Watch the flowers inside blossom.
Watch the dust get cleaned up.
Feel the warmth from the light shining through the windows.
This is not about a perfect house. It’s about cleaning house.
(Perfection is a man-made lie)
This is what it means to mature.
This is what it means to grow up. (Not to be grown up, but to grow up, because life is progress. A grown up is a static state, not dynamic.)
When you get your home "clean," and you begin to see what clean looks like because you have learned how to use your eyes, then you can truly recognize the homes of others.
There is neuroscientific theories around mirror neurons supporting the idea that we cannot see into others what we cannot internally see in ourselves.
The more you clean out your rooms, the more you strengthen your ability to see, and the more you understand empathetically.
Empathy is what allows you to truly enter the home of another person. It only happens when you've learned to see the rooms in your own home.
It’s what allows you to connect.
Why?
Because when you have learned to see the rooms in your own home, you can begin to understand the rooms in the home of others.
That is, when you begin to learn about your own mind, conscious and unconscious, you can then begin to see the mind of others, conscious and unconscious.
I've spoken with many about the process of opening the blinds and letting the light pour in... and it's a beautiful process.
Not easy, not clean, not “perfect.” Messy, dirty, sometimes painful... you can either fight it, or accept this inevitable law, embrace it, learn about the impact, and find peace in it.
Personally, I have opened two doors between two rooms in my life before and the light was strong. I connected two thoughts that I have never connected before. The strength of the idea immediately brought me to uncontrollable tears. From that moment on, when I examined a pattern, and changed a belief, I experienced others in a whole-hearted way. It was remarkable and meaningful.
You can't always paint over corners in your home that were once “damaged” (as the social construct would have it). And you can't always replace the furniture. But you can learn to love it and to decorate it as you see fit.
I am referring to your life story. After all, it’s just a story, it’s not you.
When you do this, life becomes a game of decoration.
“How do I want to hang the photos in my home?”
“How do I want to organize my aged furniture?”
“How do I want to organize my guest room?”
Or, more directly:
“How do I want to live?”
“How do I want to build a life around my values and beliefs?”
“How do I want to affect others who stay in my house?”
... “how do I want to write the rest of the story of my life's book?”
When you have learned how to use your eyes, you can then consciously decide how you want to see and live.
This is the shift from reactive to proactive living.
But this first requires learning how to use your eyes. It requires understanding the past and how it’s affected your lens of life.
When you have learned how to see, and how to organize your furniture and decorate your home, you learn how to be. One day at a time. Progress.
The story of your home improvement of who you are as a human being is not you. It is simply your story. It won’t define you unless you allow it to.
When you open enough windows and doors in your home so the light can pour in, you learn to actualize the light. You learn to see. To trust.
Unpacking the home
The home is your mind.
The rooms are different moments in life.
The upkeep of the home is the process of self-awareness and personal growth.
The light allows us to be affected by our environment and it allows others to truly see us.
I write these words not as someone who has figured it out. I write these words as someone who is on the same journey as you on this thing we call life. My truth is inspired by patterns I’ve recognized from many of people.
These are things I want to share.
A few of the rooms in my home
I’ve cleaned out many rooms in my house. Cleaning took years. Or sometimes minutes.
I seek deep understanding so that I live with greater conviction.
When I was critical of others, I eventually realized I was critical of myself. When I went inside my mind, I walked through my imaginary rooms, and I unpacked that idea. What do I get out of being critical?
When I had trouble accepting others, I realized it was rooted in my own lack of self-acceptance. Again, I walked through my home, and I asked myself “why” until I reached the end.
When I found myself living life for others and not myself, or being a people pleaser, I asked myself “why?” I uncovered that I was living with fear of disconnection from others. That subconscious pull was dragging me forward and it left me miserable and not living the life I wanted to live.
When I wanted life to be perfect, I realized something else. I uncovered that I wanted to be perfect in everything I did because I was afraid of being identified with anything less than perfect. That was a narrative that I needed to transcend if I wanted to mindfully live my legacy.
When I thought of life in black or white, and when I fought for such simple understanding, I realized that I wanted to be in the know. I was compensating for vulnerability. That is, when I wanted to believe life was black and white, I was fighting to avoid vulnerability. I was fighting to avoid the uncertainty, risk, and emotional exposure that true living brings. I have since learned to live in the grey.
When I doubted the words that others spoke and when I didn’t believe them, I uncovered another truth. I doubted others because deep down inside I doubted myself. I doubted my own potential. I doubted what I was capable of. I was not living life as it was, I was living life as I was.
I have connected the dots between my life, my tendencies, my lens, down to my family, my parents’ families, my cultural background, my environments, and worldwide events.
I love this quote: “For a seed to achieve its greatest expression, it must come completely undone. The shell cracks, its insides come out and everything changes. To someone who doesn’t understand growth, it would look like complete destruction.” - Cynthia Occelli
Why don’t more people clean out their homes for a greater impact?
Great question, glad you asked.
When I think about life, I break everything down.
I break down people to human beings to a species.
I break down language as something created by us.
I break down our environment, worldwide events, and the like.
I remove the concept of time and practice deep time thinking, or thinking about moments without the construct of time, where I see how something would impact the past, present, and future.
So, back to the original question: why don’t we clean our homes?
It’s labels.
It’s embarrassment.
It’s shame.
It’s fear.
It’s all these social constructs that we have created in our language. We have to joke about it to cope with it. (Not intended to be critical, only observational)
When I thought things were black and white, I hid behind words, because there was nothing more to them. I was afraid of letting go. We don’t clean our homes because we’re too afraid to even go there. We’re afraid to unpack all the "bad" things, the things that could disconnect us from others. That fear of disconnection controls our lives because we live with fear.
It’s embarrassment. We’re afraid to unpack embarrassing moments in life because we don’t want to revisit those moments.
It’s shame. To transcend our shame, and to trust in the midst of fear, requires courage. I’m talking painful memories. Rape. Abuse. Addiction. Anger. “Shameful things,” our species says. Things that, if others knew about us, would separate us from them. This is a survival instinct, it's scary, I get it. I’m not saying to take a megaphone and shout all of our traumas, pains, or insecurities. I’m saying that if we were more open, and if we shared more with the people closest to us (real things), maybe we could evolve past things quicker because we would act greater. We would act with courage.
Most of it, is fear.
I believe the human experience (HX) is about connection. I believe that we either fear connection with others, or we trust in it, and we trust in our ability to connect. In a world with terrorism, news spilling out fearful events, it’s no wonder we live the way we do. Our instinctual capacity for fear as a survival mechanism once served us so we could survive. Not anymore. Meanwhile, too many are surviving and still living in that same fear instead of living and trusting.
If our species valued effort, understanding, and legacy, maybe it would be different.
If we were taught that life is effort, and that effort brings about understanding, and that understanding helps us to leave a legacy for the next generation, then maybe life would be different.
Maybe harmful cycles would get broken sooner.
I’m not saying any of this is easy, but I am saying it’s simple to understand when understood.
Unpacking social constructs
A construct is like a building. It’s something that was built from construction.
A social construct is every concept that was built socially.
Things like stress, anger, sadness, suffering, and worry.
Research around stress shows that we are affected by stress based off what we believe about stress. Yes, if you believe stress is bad for you, you will die sooner. If you believe stress is good for you, you will live longer.
Our inner narrative, which is based from social constructs in our environment, allows us to justify and live any reality.
I find that many of the social constructs that we’ve built are weak and limiting. The more I learn, the more I see it.
For instance, if you experience your past as something that was bad, do you think it’ll be harder to clean your home?
That is, if you believe your past is a "bad thing," do you think it’ll be harder to unpack it and transcend it? Of course. Weak beliefs create resistance.
If sustainable connections are when we initiate the connection, then how do we get ourselves to want to initiate the connection? How do we get ourselves to want to put in the effort?
Simple. We focus on changing our beliefs about the connections we make.
Instead of thinking as the past as bad, for example, think about it as simply being. That is, life is the way it is, things unfolded the way it does, so let’s accept it, learn from it, learn about its impact on our lens of life, and move on.
When we remove the social constructs of "good" or "bad," we reduce the friction that it takes to put in the effort.
When you accept that we are all doing the best we can with what we’ve been given with where we’re at, you will find a newfound love for people.
The power of the mind
It’s easy to write it off and say I'm too deep, or too far removed. And that’s fine, I can’t force anything (and I don’t want to).
Like a child who is afraid of the dark, as adults we sometimes end up afraid of the dark. Afraid of things we cannot see or understand.
I will say, the mind is capable of amazing things.
When I look at stories like the Medical miracle on Everest, I see a mind that saved someone’s life from death simply through thought.
When I see the movie 127 hours about the mountain biker who cuts off his arm to survive, I see a mind that saved his life. He had a precognition, a vision about his future child, that ultimately gave him the willpower to cut off his arm, break his bone, and escape. (His precognition came true, by the way)
In “Man’s Search For Meaning,” authored by concentration camp survivor Victor Frankl, he talks about logotherapy. Logotherapy is therapy that helps people move through their suffering by changing their beliefs about their suffering. Typically, this is done by concluding that there is a greater reason for the suffering. Greater than self.
I live to inspire legacy not for myself but for future generations. Legacy is bigger than all of us.
The title of this insight is about optimizing the mind, not maximizing it, because we still exist in our bodies. My car could drive to 140 miles per hour... but that’s not safe for those around me or the engine. Optimize, don’t maximize.
I am calling you to connect
When I first rode my mountain bike in the various mountains around Southern California, it was difficult.
For the first several times riding, I fell, a lot.
Bloodied up knees.
Scraped up elbows.
Broken pieces on the bike.
I remember one time riding a technical trail for the first time. A technical trail is filled with rocks, roots, ruts, and sometimes cliffside exposure.
I remember, in my early days, getting bumped off the bike from hitting so many rocks.
My feet would get bumped off the pedals and I’d lose my footing.
And then I took a chance and upgraded my shoes and bike.
I clipped into the pedals.
My foot is physically attached to the pedals.
Now, when I ride technical terrain with rocks, my feet are locked into the bike.
I experience a different state of flow.
Fully present.
Fully immersed.
Fully focused.
I am calling you to clean your home.
To connect with self better.
To connect with others better.
To connect with our existence, better.
Not for yourself, but for those you impact.
For your unborn great-great-great-great-grandchild.
Because legacies are being lived right now.
