Talk Yourself Into It

Photo by Frankie Cordoba on Unsplash

This has been a bit of a challenging week for me. I got smacked with a reality check that I didn’t know I needed. It’s like knowing a subject then taking a test on that subject and the test not having any questions relevant to your study material. You know it but you don’t know it. That’s how I felt this week. I knew what was happening, but I didn’t really know what was going on. It started out with my existential crisis then it turned into borderline burnout, and now I'm just powering through.

My commitment to something greater for and than myself requires me to not stay stuck for too long. I found that out today. I don’t like the concept of work. I’m not going to get into it because I don't need to. Everyone feels differently about it but my stance comes from my personal theology and interpretation of the Bible from Genesis to Revelation. Yes, God made work but then God cursed work. But, Jesus came and offered us redemption. So, my work shouldn’t feel like work.

I don’t really care what someone else thinks about that. And I could flesh out that point more in some other capacity, but if I do, that’s an idea I need to be paid for up front for reasons that are between me and God. The pursuit of greenbacks frequently takes its toll on me. There are many reasons for that as alluded to already, but also with respect to money anyone who understands money well will tell you that you objectively shouldn’t work for money period.

Labor is ghetto. Labor as a primary source of income is for the less fortunate. It’s the worst way to generate cashflow because it doesn’t generate cashflow. The concept of work doesn’t make anything new. Maybe you make new things while you’re at work. But you clocking in somewhere doesn’t materially add anything to you. You’re not creating or manifesting money in your life, you are sacrificing your life energy for money. Labor is an exchange. On its best day work is the practice of alchemy. I elaborate on this dynamic further in the Life with Ken Financial Literacy Course, but essentially labor is the curse on work from God.

By the sweat of your brow you will work the ground and it will produce thorns. You don’t have time for your kids, family, future plans, the desires of your heart, etc, because you’re tired from laboring. That money you got from your labor literally cost you your life force and virility, it didn’t add anything. I feel that. This is true for me too right now. I’m building this brand to the best of my ability and objectively speaking, as a human, sometimes I get tired. They say sleep when you’re dead, well if you don’t sleep along the way, you will be dead.

This week I discovered how to get over this hump. Your north star needs to remain top of mind. People can tend to be short sighted. You need to have a prize set your eye on that prize and continue to gaze at it, especially when things get difficult. You can’t be bogged down by your day to day, and you can’t allow yourself to be derailed when things don’t go your way. If for example, you’re working and you get discouraged somewhere along the day, find some time to stop. Figure out where you can take a break, do so, and allow yourself to recalibrate.

So many maladaptive things ran through my mind this week and I felt defeated more than once. But when I had a chance to stop, I did. And once I did the critical things that I did that helped change my perspective were pray, sleep, and eat. I took care of my physiology. I also thought about things critically. I value reducing down the rationality of certain things that may come to my mind. And once I assessed my thoughts and what made sense and what didn’t, I was able to come to the conclusion that sometimes I have to talk myself into progress, change, and newness.

I thought about all of my thoughts that didn’t make sense. And then I thought about how empty I felt from my thoughts that do make sense. I remembered that the wages of sin is death and that while the things that don’t make sense may make me feel full, they won’t actually fill me. For me, I deduced that if the path of the straight and narrow feels unsatisfying, then it’s not because I'm going the wrong way, but rather it’s because I haven’t arrived where I'm going yet. Deploy your resolve to gain perspective. Keep going until you get what you want and any time things get difficult, use that difficulty as fuel to remind yourself of why you want what you want in the first place.