This month, I’m not gonna hit you with the normal bullet point solutions.

I’m going to be super open and honest with you.

Change is hard and f*cking scary.

When I reflect on being a young 20-something, I see a kid who wanted ONE thing - Play Drums for a Living.

That was the end all be all.

Bu, we grow, we change.

It would be so hard for me to reconcile with the “fact” that if I wanted to make money, I had to get a job and the only jobs I could picture myself doing were jobs that made me miserable.

The one track mind was slowly peeled away.

Ultimately, I found myself trying to live life one way and wanting it to be another.

I was unfulfilled.

I’m really minimizing this whole thing by putting it in a newsletter(this has been years and years of work) but I’ve had everything I could ever want and more all along.

People like me are slow, we see the changes we want to make and can’t make the next move toward that. We’re held up because we don’t want make the wrong move.

We unhappily fumble fro thing to thing hoping that it will fulfill us.

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I know you’re probably expecting a nice conclusion to all of that. I don’t have some final point that is going to package this up and put it away.

What I do have are a few things that have helped me get to a place of consistent growth, freedom and peace.

What’s one habit you’ve been wanting to build?

The hardest one for me has been the practice routine. You’re probably like me, you can skate by, fake knowing what’s going on and still sound pretty solid on the instrument.

I was lacking discipline though. I wanted to get better butI wasn’t putting the work.

I can;t remember exactly what triggered this but I started learning the lifetime warmup from Tommy Igoe, probably just because I needed some structure and guidance. It took a minute to grasp the stuff in that but once I figure the exercises out, the goal was to do it all in 10 minutes everyday.

I know, it doesn’t sound like much, and it isn’t.

10 minutes? Out of the whole day? That’s nothing.

and that’s the point. It was easy to slip that into my morning routine.

Now, I don’t have all of the answers to whatever your thing is. But I have questions.

Can that big goal be chipped away at in small chunks?

What’s the smallest action you can take to start?

I’ve used this same process for: Meditating, reading, journaling.

That 10 minutes is a sweet spot for me and after years, it builds up like crazy. You start to realize the amount of hours you’ve put in and you start to see the fruits of your labor.

Be open and listen to your instincts

Reflecting on younger me, having that one track mind. It really closes you off to opportunity.

Over the last 3 years or so, I’ve leaned hard on my curiosity. Got into, self hosting my website and other things. Started learning how to write better. I’m on a journey of creating for short form content.

I’ve discovered I like telling stories and I love learning about how the brain works.

All of this has opened up new doors for me to explore.

Part of that is seeing myself as someone who is always learning and growing.