It’s early, as I write this. 4:38am. (more…)
Category: All Blog Posts
-
Inch-by-inch.
The Inches Speech by Al Pacino in the movie “Any Given Sunday” gave me chills when my best friends and I, like some teenagers acting out a heroic warrior legacy, would listen to it before we set out for battle… football games.
The playing field is different for me now, and I must admit, I giggle a bit thinking about my 14 year old self listening to that speech, squeezing my hands over my headphones to block out the surrounding noise, Pacino’s words rattling through my skull:
“We can stay here and get the s*** kicked out of us, or, WE CAN FIGHT OUR WAY BACK! Into the light!”
“THAT’S WHAT LIVIN’ IS! THE 6 INCHES IN FRONT OF YOUR FACE!”
Inch-by-inch.
That’s my story. Step-by-step. Scrapping my way out, from a meaningless, predestined self-sabotaging hell that I blindly accepted as ‘normal’ at one point in my life. Why? WE ARE NOT DISCIPLINED ENOUGH TO GET STARTED DOING THE THINGS THAT WE REALLY ACTUALLY WANT IN LIFE.
Not me. I wanted to be uncommon. To be great. The secret?
Inch-by-inch. Incremental progress.
I can’t give you a guide for every unique step, but understanding THE CONCEPT of incremental progress is a must.
Not one damn thing worth having or achieving in this life is randomly happened upon or a result of overnight fortune. It is always a culmination of time invested, preparedness for opportunity, often countless immensely agonizing thoughts, and mostly, disciplined consistency.
Read it again. Go back, and read it again, say it to yourself. ⇑
When I pulled out my notebook and began theorizing what it was, besides Pacino, that helped me to understand the importance of incremental progress, I came up with 4 very commonplace, basic training tools that anybody could implement into their life.
These 4, small, easy-to-do activities can help each of us train our brains to appreciate and catch momentum with incremental progress. The good thing, almost any person at any time of day, at any age, in any place, can do these things:
1) Piggy Bank
Seems like nobody keeps a piggy bank anymore. Maybe that’s because change is largely worthless these days. That said, we can just switch over to paper bills. I pop a $5 or $20 bill in a jar every couple days. There’s no better feeling than cracking that thing open and realizing that over time, the money we probably hadn’t been missing has been stacking up. Last time I cashed my piggy bank I had $600 saved up. Yay for me. Now I can afford 1 month of A/C in South Carolina. More importantly, it gave me the mental reinforcement that my consistent contributions truly were adding up.
2) Planting a Tree
This is a no brainer.
Planting and tending for trees probably takes the cake for “Most Life Metaphors Learned Ever”. Incremental progress, discipline, weathering storms, starting small (even when we’re weak) knowing that one day we’ll be strong and sturdy. It’s all there. Planting a tree, or tending a small garden in our yards is not only greatly beneficial to our overall psyche and worldview, but it’s a minimally time-consuming way to train our brains that consistent input starts the upward spiral, and we can physically see it every day/week/month that our tree continues to grow.3) Physical Fitness
This one is easy. Even if it’s just a few walks a day or a 15 minute light rotational workout, consistency in a physical routine not only puts us in a better mood, but we’re mentally rewarded by the progress we see in the mirror. That’s usually incentive enough to keep going. Just a few days of discipline to build the momentum. That’s how most difficult tasks are, just need to take it rep-by-rep, inch-by-inch.
4) Book Reading
If you’re like me, a consistent reading habit has come way too late in your life. I look back and think, had I known how impactful reading was going to be on my overall success, I would’ve started a better habit years ago. “It’s boring” or “I’m a slow reader”, they’re the worst excuses. Start small. Incremental! If we do 5 pages a day before we roll out of bed, we can finish a book in a month or less. To people that rarely read, the idea of finishing 12 books in a year sounds ludicrous (Self-Check: what is the last year that you did that in?). What’s not so crazy sounding? 5 pages a damn day. It’s not a death sentence. Start there. It’s unbelievably healthy for us, and to be honest, once that train gets moving, it’s hard to stop. Addiction to something that makes us better? Impossible! Not really.
All 4 of these habits can be built into a daily schedule without much difficulty. Not to say that they won’t require some discipline, because they will. Over time, like all things, our natural understanding of incremental progress will improve with repetition.
If we train our brains with these habits, maybe we will one day stand as examples of how those small daily tasks are the only true way to achieve the great big dreams.
The inch-by-inch, step-by-step, the incremental progress mindset is one worth adopting.
A note from the author:
CONTACT ME
Twitter | Facebook | Instagram | YouTube| jakob@myc.team
Serving you is my sincerest pleasure. Please, don’t hesitate to reach out with criticisms (be harsh), praise (not necessary), questions (answers), or just to say hello and chat (my favorite).Love & Areté,
Jakob Gollon -
It’s not what it once was.
Nothing ever is.I think back to the tragedy that caught the Nation’s attention 17 years ago, and the way everything stood still, collectively suspended, in awe. Together, in awe.
Maybe the last time we stood collectively about anything.
Neighbors that hadn’t spoken in years, sharing tears.
Family who’d procrastinated making phone calls, chatted all night.
Games stopped.
Drama stopped.
Walmart probably didn’t close.Schools stopped teaching (or testing).
Children didn’t stop learning, though.
I was a child in 2001—a 5th grader.
I learned a great many things that day. There’s a lot I still have not learned.Are we wiser than our former selves?
Who was the enemy?
That fear, for months following, made every other small issue disappear.
How could anyone do this to innocent people?
We are innocent people, but we are not AN innocent people.
What will it take to unite us again?Many of our enemies are faceless, big and small. A great many heroes emerged that day and for years after, many of whom are also faceless.
To the faceless, uncommon humans, the hero sort,
Thank you for your courage. Thank you for freedom.
To anybody living courageously in the name of something truly just, at any time, thank you.
Every once in a short while, my ideas just won’t come out in full sentences and proper grammar. When that happens, I tend to write a poem instead.
-
The sort of person that can’t wait to learn something new,
to expand my mind into uncharted territory, that’s me!Spending all day thinking about thinking,
and toying with the ready-to-pop potential that each author boasts,
I can’t help but buy the book.All the hours of the day
I spend thinking about all the new things that
I could be learning.And so I sit. And so they sit, those books, as heaps of useless words,
like a junkyard of 8-tracks and CD’s in a world of iPhones.It’s a wretched, frightful thing to own a vast library
of books,
most of them never opened.The thirst for knowledge,
That chalice of existential meaning,
Is more like the Holy Grail than any of us would prefer.
The path is rugged and daunting.
The commitment, great.
The detail, mundane.
The time, tiresome.The chance, the lesson, the reward?
is Areté
Pick up the next book you see.
Every once in a short while, my ideas just won’t come out in full sentences and proper grammar. When that happens, I tend to write a poem instead.
-
We should never feel guilty for staying true to our vision.
In the process-of-progress, it’s difficult for people to conceive in their mind the same outcomes that we have–our vision.
Any great vision is too complex for bystanders to fully comprehend. Spend no time or energy pondering the side-comments or evaluations of those who do not understand the bigger picture.
Those who do understand our vision, we need to hear, heeding their advice if necessary.
Maybe, it’s worth revisiting our vision. Especially so, if we never took the time to make sure it was the right vision in the first place.
A note from the author:
CONTACT ME
Twitter | Facebook | Instagram | YouTube| jakob@myc.team
Serving you is my sincerest pleasure. Please, don’t hesitate to reach out with criticisms (be harsh), praise (not necessary), questions (answers), or just to say hello and chat (my favorite).Love & Areté,
Jakob Gollon
JAKOB'S JOURNAL 