You vs You

Change your story, change your significance; stop being good at bad habits and start being good at good habits. We all have work to do.

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@alignpodcast has a unique vocation. He has spent his life finding the tactical ways to leverage your body to help defend itself against modern life. Head to bit.ly/AMP236 for the full podcast.

A post shared by Aubrey Marcus (@aubreymarcus) on Dec 21, 2019 at 12:42pm PST

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Every year around this time we get happy. We are happy because we are off from work, wrapping presents and spending time with friends and family! We are looking forward to putting our feet up and getting some well-deserved rest. As we are resting and our stress is at an all-time low, we start to think about how we want to better ourselves in the new year. Some people want to lose weight, others want to get the promotion at work or reach a new sales goal in their job, etc. Sadly, the reality is that the vast majority of us don’t last but for a few weeks with our resolutions. So, what are you going to do differently this year to change the outcome? The nice comfortable environment we are in right now makes us create lofty goals. What are you going to do when your New Year’s resolution was to run every day and when you wake up, look outside and see that it is snowing and -2 degrees? What are you going to do when your New Year’s resolution was to do better in school and you have a book report due tomorrow but all of your friends are going out to the club? When most people come against such a roadblock, that is when the commitment to the resolution is tested. What are you going to do differently this year to make it the full year? If your mindset is to do what most people do and that is to take the easy route, you have made the decision to be common in a very common world. If you make the decision to put those shoes on and run anyway or forego the night at the club, you have opted out of the choice to be a soft motherfucker and chosen to be a savage! For those of you who decide to take the easy route, Merry fucking Christmas! This decision will keep you exactly where you have always been- wishing you were better, never knowing that you have the ability but you chose not to use it!

A post shared by David Goggins (@davidgoggins) on Dec 21, 2019 at 3:28pm PST

Treasure Valley Podcast

Lol, had fun talking nonsense on the Treasure Valley Podcast. Thanks, Chuck & LowerGentry Studios for having me!

Also, I tricked Charles into doubling the length of the podcast by busting out my own set of questions after his! :D

#longestguest




www.lowergentrystudios.com

Balanced Training

There's a time to train, and there's a time to recover;
there's a time to learn, and there's a time to apply.

Time as Currency

04/08/17 William Fitzsimmons

If you want some chill music to listen to in the mornings I recommend William Fitzsimmons on Pandora, it's one of my go-to's for mellow morning music.

Free DISC Test

I came across a resource for taking a free DISC test. I was browsing job postings and one of them referred to a free DISC test that can be taken by going to Tony Robbin's website and searching 'DISC'. The test is easy and fairly quick - about twenty five questions. As with other personality tests, like Myers-Briggs, the information can be helpful but isn't a complete picture of the person. I'm not super familiar with DISC, although I've heard of it before and may have taken it before, but I can see how it would be helpful for an employer assessing personality aspects of someone, or even just personal use. I'm not sure I agree with their assessment of altruism since most questions that seemed relevant to that dealt with things like charity or volunteering, but I think someone can be altruistic in other ways such as on a personal level in their own lives with people they know. But, if you want to check it out you can go to www.tonyrobbins.com, click the search magnifying glass in the top-right, type 'DISC', and click the DISC PROFILE result; or, click the link below.

Free Test: DISC PROFILE

Cheers!

On Reading

I suppose I read for the same reasons I wear shoes and drive a car. I could live without those things, but not the same. I suppose the reasons others read vary as widely as choices of footwear and transportation. Exercise and parties may be a better analogy still.

A thought . . .

Brown Truck: LowerGentry's first feature-length film

LowerGentry has recently completed their first feature-length film, Brown Truck. The film won't be publicly available anytime soon as they're in the process of applying to get it into a film festival. However, you can catch a trailer and clip of the film below, then follow LowerGentry on Facebook for updates here!

Brown Truck trailer:


A clip from Brown Truck:

Something Valuable I Learned From "Brain It On!"

This is Brain It On!. I started playing this game on my phone recently and it has been a valuable learning experience. Similar to how chess taught me about blind spots - how you can see the whole board, how your and your opponent's pieces are laid out, yet still be surprised by an attack that you weren't focusing on, the game Brain It On! has also taught me something interesting about myself and how the mind works. Basically, you try to creatively solve puzzles by creating your own pieces and strategy for completing a short objective. What's interesting to me is that oftentimes I'll feel like a puzzle is nearly impossible and have no idea how to solve it. I'll try several different things over and over, take breaks from the game, but then eventually I figure it out - I'll come up with a new idea and quickly solve it or just try different things until I slowly get it right. There were several levels where I thought they may be the end of the game for me.

What's fascinating about this to me is that if I were to only put in an initial effort I would never have solved most of the puzzles, and I might be left with the impression that most of them are impossible or too difficult. Of course, my willingness to persist was largely based on the assumption that the game is well-designed and thus the puzzles are solveable, but that's where in real-life there may be a wisdom factor in deciding how much effort is worth putting in for something where the possibility of the outcome is unknown. What's really insightful about all of this, though, is that I can apply this realization to other areas of my life - if I only put an initial effort into my goals and endeavors, then for many of them I'll never get nearly as far as I could if I really applied myself. The valueable application of this for me is in thinking, "how many things in my life do I bring that level of persistent effort to?"

Inspirational Videos, 2

I don't necessarily agree with everything in these videos, but have still found them inspiring and thought-provoking. Enjoy:


Mike Dolce:

Joe Rogan:

Joshua Parker/Shia LaBeouf:

Today's Breakfast

Oatmeal with a bunch of stuff (oatmeal, 10-grain hot cereal, sunflower seeds, walnuts, raisins, chia seeds, and banana, sprinkled with cinnamon and nutmeg), 4 scrambled eggs with spinach (seasoned with salt, basil, and oregano), cottage cheese from the cottage (not really; and sprinkled with paprika), and black coffee; I did also have a protein bar early on when I woke up:

A good amount of fuel there following yesterday's workout. Today I'm mostly focusing on light, repetitious movements, maybe a little cardio, and stretching.

Today's Workout

Today's workout, a bit harder than I expected but that was partly the point; some of it was easier — surprised I was able to keep up with doing push-ups in sets of 20.

Independent People

No one told them to do that.
If so, no one told them to listen;
So on and so on.
If that's the way it is,
It doesn't depend on me;
Albeit there may be some things.
This is refreshing; should be so obvious.
When everything you see is from one perspective,
Imagine how many things like these there must be.

Adapting and Arranging

Do you succumb to your environment, or does your environment succumb to you?

Self-Development vs. Self-Care

I want to start exercising a distinction between self-development and self-care. Many things fall under both categories, but I think there are enough things that don't to make the distinction worth considering. It's easy to focus so much on being productive in terms of self-development that you either burn out or begin losing a sense of self. On the other hand it's also easy to be so internally focused on doing what you want and not disciplining yourself beyond what's required of you that you end up in kind of a static spot where you're not growing and developing in ways that would enrich your personal activities.

Both are enriching, but I think both can be overdone when they're done at the expense of the other. This is similar to the need for rest when you're active, but rather than simply seeing it as a distinction between doing things that are productive for self-development and taking a break from those things, I want to broaden the concept to see self-care as a different, but in some ways just as active, form of productivity. So it may include simply resting and taking it easy, but it isn't reduced to that. I see self-development as doing or learning things that increase your capacity or skill at doing or remembering the same or similar things in the future- so it's aimed at practice, discipline, and the growth that follows those things when they're done well. I see self-care as doing things that nourish your sense of self, satisfy your healthy needs and desires, and heal and repair you. These aren't the easiest categories to exhaustively define, but for the sake of providing myself with satisfying options besides just the sometimes tiring habit of self-development type endeavors this will suffice as a start.

My point is to see the value in and need for taking care of yourself in addition to developing yourself, and how efforts in one can enrich the other. I'm not setting these up as the only categories- interpersonal relationships are really important also but I'm simply adding clarity to one area of life by adding a distinction.

One way to parse out this distinction may be to think of things pertaining to self-development as those things which may be expected of you to do- pick up after yourself, develop skills, be physically competent and fit to handle situations you may come across, learn the things you may need to know, etc. and to think of things pertaining to self-care as that which may be expected of you to be- what are your interests, what do you value, what makes you happy, what experiences have you enjoyed, what are you good at, who are you given your unique experience and make-up as a person?

Thomas Sowell's Clarifying Thoughts: discussing economic issues regarding minorities

I don't know enough to outright validate Thomas Sowell but I appreciate his clarifying approach to complex issues. He doesn't just try satisfying an issue on a simple point of comparison but digs into the complexity of an issue by taking into account the various factors that surround something like statistics and also looks into areas of a topic beyond the issue at hand in order to challenge and clarify the assumptions behind the proposed problem. I haven't looked a lot into Thomas Sowell but at this point I at least appreciate his clarifying handling of complex issues.

Try

Quiet Car Ride

All that noise had been burying me,
Never has silence sound so sweet.
When to be filled is to lessen what I feel,
All that space is what it takes for me to breathe.

Cavendish Pipe

I'm just all alone but it's not quite a fright,
I sit on this porch and smoke my cavendish pipe.
The snow falls, it's cold;
I feel the things that I felt,
I fear getting old.
I'm just on the porch smoking my cavendish pipe,
the smoke is thick and it's late, well into the night.
I'm here, you're never around;
it's just me and no one is here,
they aren't when they are.
The tobacco in my pipe is burning up,
I guess I'll call it a night,
I didn't feel how I wanted tonight.
But there's always next time,
Even though this was like last.
I'll just rest my pipe and call it a night,
tuck my shoes under the bed and turn out the light.

(edited 9/14/15)

Lowergentry's "Brown Truck": Final Draft of Script Writing Complete

Lowergentry's Elliot Norton and Charles Norton have completed the final draft of their latest film script, Brown Truck.

The immediate next step for them is a private script read-through with Lowergentry collaborators, followed by a long-anticipated transition into their first feature-length filming phase. Following several 48-hour film projects for Idaho's i48 film competition, and numerous other independent film productions, Brown Truck will expand territory for Lowergentry as they have hitherto only produced short film works. What they can hope to retain from previous efforts is a quality and originality that has awarded them successful acknowledgements including:

2013 i48's "Second Best Film" for Twomancrew,
2014 i48's "Best Use of Character" for Guru's Sandbox,
and 2015 Idaho Media Award's "Best Narrative" for Canyon County.

Image by Lowergentry.com
For updates on Lowergentry and their newest project, Brown Truck, follow them on:

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Visit their website at www.lowergentry.com