908: You can't live in a cabin in the woods for the rest of your life.

Tolstoy said, "Any self-improvement is impossible if you live constantly in the bustle of the everyday world—but it’s also less possible if you live in constant solitude. (You can’t do that either.)

If you want to improve yourself, the best approach is to develop and establish your view of things in solitude, and then apply it as you live in the everyday world."

I love this quote. It speaks directly to why I bang the drum about starting your day with you. I say this: set time aside every morning and put yourself first.

In this episode I will show you how. 

Transcript

1:31

All right. 3, 2, 1. Let's get it. Let me read to you a quote that I read from Tolstoy this morning, and it really sets the bar for how I live and why I bang the drum on the things that I bang the drum on. So here's what Tolstoy wrote. He said, any self-improvement is impossible if you live constantly in the bustle of the everyday world, but it's also less possible. If you live in constant solitude, can't do that either. He said, if you want to improve yourself, the best approach is to develop and establish a view of things in solitude, and then apply it in the everyday world. Bro, absolutely love this quote because it speaks directly on why I bang the drum about starting the day with you. Look as much as you wish that you could live in a cabin in the woods away from civilization to Tolstoy's point, you cannot. You cannot live your life in total solitude, but you also cannot live plugged in 24 7 to the hustle and bustle in the world. This is why I say you gotta put yourself first. Set some time aside every morning and put yourself first. The way to do that couple things, and the way to do that is to read 10 to 15 minutes. I'm a fan of random reading because it's something fresh every single day. I'm not trying to plow through a book.'cause a lot of times that's what we're trying to do. If we're just trying to white knuckle it and get through a book. This is why it keeps things spicy for me. I like to read. I go to my bookshelf every morning. I look at something at titles and I'm like, what do I wanna read about today? What am I struggling with? What? Just something, and then sometimes I'm just. Not like there's nothing really pulling at me and I just stare at it and look at it and I go all around. I get on the floor down there,'cause I have books on the floor too, and I pick that one chapter. So I go to the, I pick the title, I go to the table of contents. I pick a chapter that just jumps out there at me and I read that one chapter. Set your timer, 10 to 15 minutes, and you read that one chapter. And then I close the book. And then I write about it. What is it? How do I see it? How do I interpret that? That's what I want you to do. So let me bring it back around. I want you to pick a random book, read it, set your timer, 10 to 15 minutes. I. Because we all sit there and say, man, I'd love to read more. Right? This is a way to do that in bite-size chunks, and you could do this all throughout the day if you wanted to, but I will stress, you gotta do this before the world starts pulling at you in the mornings. Set a half hour aside, 10 to 15 minutes of random reading. Pick the, pick a book, go to the table of contents. What book, what chapter jumps out there at You? Read that one chapter. And then write at least one page. It's often gonna be a couple, but at least one page about what you just wrote about. Now, here's why I am a fan of and a push to not type, not, not video it, uh, not record it in your audio. You can, you can come back around to that. But first and foremost, you must write these thoughts out. The reason being is, is because your mind is rambling. Okay, it's, it's scattered. It's all over the place. And think of your writing as a funnel. So what it does is it takes all of this overwhelm, stress, fatigue, rambling, scatteredness in your mind. You got all these things going around. I hear voices. You have all these things going around. And then what it does is it funnels down. And so you have to pick up the pen. And you have to conceptualize what you're writing.'cause you're not gonna ramble when you write. Okay? You're gonna think about it and then you're gonna be like, okay, how can I put this into words? Right? You ever have times where you're just like, I, I don't even know how to explain it. The reason why you don't know how to explain it is because you haven't conceptualized it. But when you do this. That 30 minutes, 15 minutes of random reading, another 15 minutes of at least one page every single day about what you just wrote, you're gonna be able to think more clear. You're gonna be concise, you're gonna be decisive, and it primes your mind. So instead of walking out of the house wondering, I don't know, I mean, you're reacting to the day and you don't know what you're living for that day. You're just trying to get through a Monday instead of doing that. Because you've set that 30 minutes aside, you wrote, you read, you wrote it out, what it means to you, and now your mind is primed. You're gonna go out there to tol story's point, you're gonna go out there and you're going to A, it sets the bar. You're gonna go live that, or B and b if you wanna look at it, either R and um, a lot of times what you're gonna do is, is you're gonna write about that. And then the world coincidentally intersects with just what you wrote about this morning. Dude, I can't tell you how many times I'm like, oh my God, I just wrote about that this morning. I just gave that some thought. And see, you're internally prepared. You're mentally prepared. Shit. You got something to talk about instead of, man, it's supposed to rain this week a lot. All that small talk. No, man, you're, you're talking about it. You set the, it primes your mind. You set the sale, you set the bar, you go live that, and then you rinse and repeat tomorrow. Dude, if you will do this for the next 30 days, it is my prayer that that 30 days you'll begin to see a noticeable dip. There's no way you can't. No way. You can't, if you do what I just told you, if you do this in the next 30 days, you're gonna see a big difference. And hopefully this creates a lifestyle for you. Do. When I don't read and write every single morning, I'm like, I'm whatever, Dr. Jackal, Mr. Hyde, I don't know which one was, I'm just not cool at all. Because I just kind of bumble and stumble along through the day. It just, my day's outta sync. This is the thing, man, that just puts those grooves in there and it just sinks up and it locks. And then that way, man, I got the wheels turning and I'm not reacting to the day the world is gonna pull at you. That 30 minutes, okay, you still got 23 hours and 30 minutes more. The world's gonna be pulling at you from there. But for that 30 minutes, put that time aside. Do that and watch a difference. Alright, let's get outta here. Keep it simple. Keep it moving. Never settle. State. Tough piece.