2021-11-25 — The Architect is in the House

Gooooooooood morning!!! 😊🥳😁

…

Well… I started that around 4 a.m, and it’s now 5:20. I wrote and then deleted quite a bit because… I don’t want to write anything that’s divisive. Suffice it to say, I’m discouraged after going and reading a bit more history and commentary about Thanksgiving. Instead of detailing my discouragements, I’ll simply say this:

I hope we as members of the race of humanity on this planet increase in our compassion, understanding, love, and consideration for one another.

Ok. That’s all I’m going to write about that.

Moving on (queue me trying to get back the enthusiasm that I had bubbling up before I started reading all that stuff).

Last night I started building my palace vision. This first iteration has 16 rooms, each designed to focus on a particular character attribute (which I’ll list below). Inside each room you’ll find visual representations– pictures on the walls, and screens playing scenes–of what I (stephen) would look like (in even the most difficult of circumstances for me personally to manifest that particular attribute) as the pure embodiment of that attribute. These scenes where I embody that attribute constitute my dream, my vision for who I want to be.

I likely will have additional iterations, perhaps fewer rooms in the palace, as similar attributes are consolidated, or more rooms as additional attributes are built on as additions to the palace.

The rooms of my palace are as follows (and in no particular order): Loving, Patient, Grateful, Understanding, Honest, Generous, Disciplined, Focused, Forgiving, Gentle, Kind, Humble, Optimistic, Serene, Fearless, Indomitable.

The visual representations seen in each room of the palace, those scenes playing across the screens, those are depictions of my why. What I will be when I become the embodiment of these attributes, and what I can be for others, these are my why. These are why I get up in the morning. These are why I choose to see the obstacle as the way. I can do great good for the world right now. I’ll be able to do that much better the more I embody the attributes that make up my palace.

It is my hope that the more vivid I can make that tour of my palace, the clearer I can see the images in the scenes that play across screens of each room in my mind, the more passionate, the more focused, the more dedicated I will be to sacrifice what I want now, for the man I want to be and the good I want to do.

I am under no illusions. This is hard mental, emotional, and spiritual work. It is exhausting. But it’s my path. It’s my journey, and every step along the way is an opportunity, every experience a gift. Every day is a good day and every moment a paradise of possibility.

Bring it on.

I will do this.

No excuses.

Indomitable.

(in case you were wondering, my excitement is mostly back 🙃😊)

1. I’m grateful to have been able to get up today. It was hard. I was super tired last night and didn’t feel rested much at all when I woke up this morning, but I’m committed. I’m a month in now on this course correction. I’m all in, and I’m grateful for the strength to fight past the discouragement and to be indomitable.
2. I’m grateful that bodies don’t just inflate until they burst when they get gassy. 🙃 Blast my bowels. Sometimes, I think I could power a city by myself! 🙃
3. I’m grateful every day for my 5×5 routine, for what it’s teaching me about simple, steady progress. I’ve been one who’s been focused on “getting done” for so long, that I wasn’t okay with steady progress. I wanted to start and finish the project, whether it took 5 minutes or five straight days of solid work, it was go go go, get it done. But I’m grateful to live a more balanced life and to see more actually getting done overall, I think. The constant pounding led to crashes when I’d get pretty much nothing done other than work and sleep.
4. I’m grateful to have chosen to take today off. It might seem like a little thing, but when you say yes as much as I do, it can be feat to say no and take a day off. I’m taking the day off, and I’m excited for that.
5. I’m grateful to finally feel like I’m heading a direction that’s meaningful to me. I feel the pounding temptations to wallow in my “you’ve lived a wasted life, nearly 40 years, half your life… just wasted!” thoughts that tend to want to creep in. The temptations to wallow in what could have been, wallow in thoughts of what was lost, but there’s nothing I can do about the past. The past has… passed. And now I’m here, and I’m excited to go from here.
6. I’m grateful that the rejections I feel I’ve gotten recently haven’t knocked me down like they could have. I’m still going. Still focused. And I’m looking at little things as successes–like if my videos and blog posts only get five views, then it’s worth it, if somewhere in those five views, someone feels hope, sees new possibilities, gains greater confidence, etc. It’s worth it. It’s a success. I’m grateful that I’m actually feeling that as truth and not just objectively, cognitively recognizing it.
7. I’m grateful for warm clothes on cold days, that I have the means and the opportunity to provide comfort for myself when so many people in so many places are colder than they want to be or hotter than they want to be.
8. I’m grateful have food at the ready, that I’m privileged to choose what I want to eat at each meal instead of eating whatever is possible to get or… not eating at all because I don’t have food.
9. I’m grateful for the support of all of you, your encouragement as I move along this path.
10. I’m grateful for the opportunity to follow my dreams.

Today’s Priorities or Today:

1. Finish building the first version of my palace (hard hard mental work)
2. Finish 2019 taxes (cross your fingers!)

Looking back over yesterday:

It was a good day yesterday. I took it easy. I had two jobs on the schedule, and added one more during the day. I said no to everyone else, and I scheduled nothing for today. 😊

I continue to struggle with my new morning routine. Writing this journal entry is taking so much time that it’s displacing huge amounts of time, and with that time, many of the dailies I’ve been doing each morning. I’m going to need to better discipline myself in my journal/post writing, or the balance I’ve worked hard to create will be lost. I haven’t exercised or cold showered in days now.

I want to get that in check, figure out how to focus in better on my writing, figure out how to be more efficient and more effective in what I write. Better said, not just that I want, I’m going to figure that out. I’m going to start by giving myself 30 minutes on a timer to write. Perhaps I can train myself that way to not get distracted and to focus on what’s most meaningful.

My first car was a battery job. It was farther out than I normally like to go, but it was a battery job, so it was easy. The extra drive would be worth the easy job–except, the battery type the rest of the world says is right for that make, model, and generation actually isn’t right. Google it, and you’ll find everyone selling the same wrong battery for that car (2013, Nissan Versa). Go figure.

So I got out there with the wrong battery, which ended up making the job take about 30 minutes longer because I had to drive back into town to get the right battery. But… it was a beautiful opportunity to choose to embrace the obstacle in the path as the path. My path is my palace. It’s not to make quick money. My path is patience. This experience was exactly what I needed to build my palace, not just in my mind, but in reality.

So, blessings.

Second car was a crank, no start that turned out to have a jumped timing chain, which rendered the car essentially junk, sadly.

The last car, an old 1997 Toyota LandCruiser was a crank, no start, but a very slow, almost non-existent crank. What I found was a seized motor. 😶 It had died while driving, and I ran it through a bunch of tests, and… unfortunately, the motor was seized. I’m guessing the oil pump went out, or an oil passageway got blocked, and it oil starved the engine and just… killed it. Metal on metal until it partially seized the motor. 😕

The guy was able to joke about it, saying something like, “think you can fix it for $100? Maybe $150?”

Nope. Maybe $5000… or… more. 😬

Awesome to be able to joke about stuff like that. Reminds me of the story of Thomas Edison and the huge fire where his massive warehouse with everything he was working on caught fire and went up in an enormous fire. What did he do? Told someone to get the rest of his family because the spectacle was incredible, and they’d never see another fire like that in their lives.

Look on the bright side. 😊

Daily Accountability

• Bed last night at 8:30: 😎 close enough, I think!
• Up at 3:30: 😎
• 5x5s: 😎
• Exercise: 😶
• Cold shower: 😶
• Meditation: Not really, no.
• Breakfast: 😎
• NP Work: Don’t think much.
• Tax Work: 😎
• Lunch: 😎
• Work done by 6: 😎
• Dinner: 😎
• Only truly healthy foods: 😎
• No Wasted Life: I spent some time in the evening before bed watching some YouTube videos. It wasn’t a waste of time, but it wasn’t the best choice.
• No Distracted Driving: I’m doing really badly with this right now. Perhaps my palace creation will help me with my desire to do what I know I should do here.
• Faced a Fear: This has been surprisingly hard to schedule into my life. The main reason is that I haven’t just listed out concrete actions I can take that I’m afraid of, a list I can just look at and choose from. That’s what needs to happen.
• Tamed the tongue: 😎
• Bag of veggies: Uh… I had some, but not a whole bag.

Case in point about more disciplined writing. It’s 6:32. I’ve been at this for 2 1/2 hours (and no, that’s not all writing time… but neither have I done my other dailies. Gotta get this under control. 🙃

Hope you all have a wonderful, gratitude filled day today. 😊

Lift the World

~ stephen