Have you ever been around someone who has the “it” factor?
Maybe it’s a friend. Or a colleague. Or someone you just met in passing.
You couldn’t pinpoint what that “it” factor is, but it’s obvious to you and everyone else that they’re fully engaged with their life. They have an enthusiasm that seems so painfully missing from our own life when we see it on display.
In short, they’re dialed in.
I love these people. I prefer to make them my friends. I’m like a leach, trying to use their energy as my exogenous source of inspiration. And ideally I’m paying it forward to everyone else in my life.
But how do we lean into life in this way? How do we become so absorbed in living that we don’t have the space for the endless overthinking between our ears?
There isn’t a playbook for it. But good questions lead to good answers, and here’s 3 that can help us fully engage with the life in front of us.
Who do I want to show up as today?
There is no one telling us who we have to be today. No one. How we show up for ourselves and the people around us is a choice.
I have some…learned behaviors that affect how I show up each day. Left to my own devices, I can be the grumpiest dude in the room. Call it my default mode. And for many years of my adult life I didn’t fully accept that this was a choice.
These days I’m closer to the happiest dude in the room. Why? Nothing has materially changed in my life. I simply started looking at the people I admire most in this world, and realized that what I admire about them is how they show up each day. They’re open to the world, not closed off from it. They’re positive when everyone else is blabbering on about what they hate. They’re zoned in on their goals instead of worrying about everyone else’s. They’re present with the people in front of them.
Who do you want to show up as?
It’s the most important question you’ll answer all day.
What is the most important thing for me to focus on?
We don’t move toward our goals by spreading our attention across 100 different things. We move toward our goals by getting clarity over the work. We define the most important thing, and prioritize it in our lives.
My early mornings - before the world (and kids) wake up - have consisted of breath work and rowing for years. 30 minutes of breath work. 30 minutes of stretching and rowing. Rinse and repeat.
Until recently that is.
Now my early mornings are focused on something much less sexy…selling.
Why?
Because it’s the most important goal for me to focus on right now. I just burned the boats and the fancy paycheck they came with, and instead launched a new coaching program for first-time leaders. It’s entirely up to me to ensure those boats were worth burning.
So I put the first things first and committed my early mornings to the thing that moves the needle most.
What is the good in this situation?
If we depend on everything going right in our lives, we have failed before ever getting started.
Life is chaos. Life is challenging. Life is ups and downs, highs and lows, in equal measure.
When we expect our lives to go smoothly, and depend on that smoothness for our own happiness, we have entered a game that we cannot win.
Finding the good in every situation is a practice. It requires effort. And with more effort, the practice becomes easier. Natural even. This isn’t a call for irrational optimism. It’s a call for rationally moving through the inevitable throes of life.
If you look for the bad in life, you will find it. If you look for the good in life, you will find it.
So what are you looking for?
If you find value in the things I publish here, it’d mean the world if you’d share it with someone else. It’s the only way this space and community continues to grow.
✌️ and ❤️,
Adam Griffin