Monday Morning

Just start already

If there’s one thing that sabotages our goals and aspirations, it’s our tendency to overthink and believe we have to wait until we reach some undetermined level of knowledge or expertise before we can even start. As a result, we discourage ourselves from ever beginning.

It’s a shame because we learn best through action and experience, not from thinking and planning. Envisioning what we want is important but until we act upon it, it’s just that…a vision.

We learn, too, from putting ourselves out there. An audience in the shadows of social media or in the form of a follower we’ve never met is still an audience. And a natural occurrence of interacting with this audience is improvement. We learn, improve, receive feedback, and accomplish a lot more with them. Ultimately we want to put forth the best content possible when we know someone else is looking.

Overthinking leads to inaction. We literally talk ourselves out of trying something new because we focus on all the things that could go wrong, or what other people might think of us.

Those hurdles are mostly in our own minds though, so don’t put forth too much effort trying to jump over them. Instead, never set them up in the first place.

Who wants a baby…or two…or three?

China’s government said that couples will now be able to have up to three kids, an increase from the previous two kid limit that’s been in place since 2015.

So why increase the allowed number of children? Well, as is the case with most things in life, it’s really about money. More specifically, the economy.

In order for an economy to grow and thrive it needs workers. So two kids just isn’t going to cut it if China wants to continue to be an economic powerhouse.

Still, even with the increase, the population as a whole isn’t responding the way the government had hoped. Births are way down over the past several years and it’s not clear if people really want to have three kids. Or even two for that matter.

Meanwhile here in the great US of A, the population grew at its slowest rate since the Great Depression. So to all you younger folk out there…get busy.

Quote

“I’m a bad bitch…”, “I’m the baddest bitch…”, “I’m the only bitch…”

You get the point.

I stumbled across a Spotify playlist a couple weeks ago and I’ve been listening to it most days at the gym. It’s called, “Feelin’ Myself”, and it’s a playlist consisting of only female rappers. As a 54 year-old father of 2, I have to admit, it’s quite the impressive playlist.

After a couple days of listening, I got to thinking: Now ALL of you can’t be the baddest bitch, right? I mean, someone’s gotta be lying.

But then I realized it’s not about actually being the baddest, it’s about thinking you’re the baddest.

And even if you’re not a rapper, there’s a powerful lesson here: Mindset is everything.

Your homework for next week then is to try carrying yourself like a f**king boss and see where it takes you. You might be surprised.

Until next week,

Rick