Nietzsche Quotes

Found these great quotes from Friedrich Nietzsche on Dave Rapoza's twitter and just wanted to copy them down here because they supercharged me.

 "He who cannot obey himself will be commanded. That is the nature of living creatures." - Friedrich Nietzsche

 "On the Mountains of truth you can never climb in vain: either you will reach a point higher up today or you will be training your powers so that you will be able to climb higher tomorrow." - Friedrich Nietzsche

Reflections and Bad Analogies

Gauntlet of Goals is going really well, we’re a few weeks in. I started doing it with a buddy of mine which has made it a lot easier to keep in mind. He’s been killing me in the “Lived my Life” section. It made me think about things I could do to improve in this category. I want to have a least a few days where I have 7’s at the end (meaning I hit my goal in every category). It has proven to be a challenge, which is good. It has also showed me that I don’t do many interesting things, which is bad.

After considering how I could change that, I came up with some interesting results. It’s just not that important to me right now. Within this next year, I really want to get a solid foundation going in my career. It’s my main focus right now and I’m convinced there’s no way for me to achieve my goal besides going hard and not looking back. I’ve experienced some pushback from the people around me, which ironically has only made me want to do it more. I don’t mean everybody is being negative. My family is generally supportive. It’s just not a typical desire on my end, so I get why most people don’t completely understand why I’m doing it.

But don’t get me wrong, the pushback has also given me a lot of doubts. My sacrifices have given me a lot of doubts. I see the appeal of choosing an easier path and fulfilling my desires in other parts of my life but it just doesn’t add up. I can’t see it the way other people do. That’s true for all of us, not just me. You can’t see your life from the outside looking in. At best, you can see a reflection of it which is pretty good, but it’s still not the same. This brought back a familiar idea for me.

I want to be in the driver seat of my own life. I know it’s weird, but I consider my life to be like a car on a road trip. I’ll explain a little bit. First, you have the car, which is your body. Then, you have all the possible versions of yourself filling up the seats: the lazy you, the worried you, the strong you, the stupid you, the smart you, etcetera. Okay, at this point it’s more like a bus. You get the idea. Anyway, everybody is in the car and they’re on a road trip to wherever the fuck you’re going. This is where you run into the first problem. Where are you going? Everybody in the car has to agree. If they don’t, you have to make them agree. Easier said than done, I know.

If you’ve ever been on a road-trip, you’ve probably taken turns driving. Maybe not, in which case I hope what I’m about to say still makes sense. At some point, the wrong version of you will take the wheel. This is not good because that version of you sucks at driving. Often times, we’ll let them continue to drive until some stupid shit happens. My advice is to stop letting them drive right away. When the anxious version of you wants to take the wheel, kindly take them back to their seat and tell them to sit down. Then go sit in the driver seat and take the wheel. Get yourself where you want to go, and make every part of you help by playing to each of their strengths. At this point, the driver analogy gets a little abstract, so I want to move on.

The analogy continues with the fact that you need the car to be able to get you where you’re going. You need to take care of your body, especially if you expect a lot out of yourself. If you don’t expect much, that’s cool too, it’s your life. But I just want to send a friendly reminder that if you don’t do much, you won’t get much. Again, that’s fine if that’s what you want to do, but I’m willing to bet that you genuinely want to achieve something within your lifetime. Achieving anything requires sacrifice. You can’t have your cake and eat it too.

At this point, you’re probably thinking “what the fuck did I just read” or maybe you think the road trip analogy is dumb, which is cool. You’re probably right. It is dumb. But it’s an idea that has helped me though many rough times. I put it out there in hopes it might help somebody out there. If anything, I hope it’s at least entertaining.

If you haven’t taken anything away from this, here’s what I’m trying to say in its simplest form. Your life will end one day. On that day, you’ll want to feel good about what you’ve done. Each choice you make is either harming or helping your future self, so think wisely. Take care of yourself, think critically, and stop being a loser. Also, don’t forget to laugh. It’s easy to get too serious. Your struggles aren’t that bad and they don’t last forever if you keep working at them.

“Pain is temporary. Suck is forever.” - Jason Deamer on the importance if constant iteration

Early Reflection

When I first started this blog, I figured I'd post to it every week. I thought I might even write a couple blogs per week sometimes. That didn't happen. I could have spread my first few posts out, but I didn't because I wanted there to be some stuff up here for anybody who came across it in the beginning. For the sake of posting something new, I wanted to reflect a little and share some personal goals and hurdles of mine.

Recently, these two dudes I follow started a challenge about leading a healthier, more balanced life. They have both been workaholics at some point in their life, so I always take note of their advice. I always try to learn from people further down the path than I am. The challenge is called the Gauntlet of Goals, and it’s pretty cool. I’ll explain it really quick.

Basically, there are 7 categories: Diet, Fitness, Prosperity, Lived my Life, Knowledge, Charitable Deeds/Did Something for Someone I Love, and Habits. It’s a ton of stuff, but each category is pretty essential to lead a healthy, balanced life. All of these categories can make you a better person and your main goals will fall within at least one of these categories. The categories are put into a spreadsheet that divides each month into weekly sections. Now, I’ll take Habits as an example to explain how it works. Each day you do your Habit, you get a point. If you do your habit every day for the week, you get an extra point for the week (8 points total). No half-point bullshit. There are other bonuses, but you get the idea. The points aren’t really worth anything, but it’s a way to track your progress and reflect on your performance throughout the week. Depending on the type of person you are, just filling the spreadsheet out and seeing your behavior in black and white is really helpful and motivating. If you’re competitive, do it with somebody you know. That way you can watch each other do it too.

I’m a big fan of gathering data, especially about yourself and how you spend your time. If you leave it up to you, it’s easy to lie or cut yourself a little slack. It’s also impossible to know, for absolute sure, that you spent the amount of time you said you would on doing something. It’s a much bigger problem for people who work from home, but it’s true for everybody.

So, for this week, I’d recommend reflecting on those categories listed above and defining some goals you have. Then, do something to track that progress. It doesn’t have to be a spreadsheet. Just track it in whatever way is easy for you. The important thing is to identify and execute. As I mentioned before, be as specific as you can be. Good luck.

P.S. I didn’t proof-read this one because I’m in a rush. If there’s typos, I’m human.

A Few Tips on Setting Goals

In this post, I wanted to share some tips that help make setting goals easier and more effective. These might be obvious to you. Even if they are you can still probably do them better.

1.      Don’t make it negative.

To set a lasting goal, don’t give it a negative connotation (unless you’re motivated by pessimism like me). For example, don’t say, “I’m going to cut sugar from my diet”, or “ I need to lose weight.” Instead, flip it to something that reminds you of your end goal. “I want to be healthier” “I want to have more energy” “I want to look good naked”, whatever your thing is. Give it a positive spin. Make it something that gives you a little push to want to do it. If it’s something you hate to remind yourself of, you’ll quit.

2.      Don’t tell anyone about it.

At least for a while, you should keep your goal to yourself. The reason being, if you tell somebody you’re doing something, chances are they will congratulate you or encourage you. From that, you’ll get a positive feeling, like a little endorphin kick. You want that positive feeling to come from actually doing the thing, not telling people you’re doing it.

3.      Be as specific as you can.

Sometimes goals can be too big on the surface level, so you need to go deeper and break it up into smaller tasks. Before you set it, make sure you’ve defined exactly what your goal is and what it isn’t. If you’re pushing yourself as you should be, it’s very common to miss your goal, even by a little bit. That’s why it’s important to be as exact as you can from the beginning. Even if you miss, you’ll still be way better off than if your goal was vague from the start.

4.      Define your next action.

This one has been really helpful for me, and goes along with number 3. If your goal is big or you can’t think all the way through it, just define the next thing you need to do to make it happen. Make it an action to get you started.

Self Improvement and Productive Procrastination

From all the things that I’ve wanted to improve about myself over the years, I’ve learned that the things I’ve continued to do consistently have a few things in common with each other. Regardless of what your new habit is, you have to want it for the right reasons. Otherwise, you’ll flake on it super-fast. For me, all those reasons have come from a similar place.

You have to really want it for yourself. Not in a selfish way, though there is selfish sacrifice at times. I mean you have to want to be a better version of yourself. You have to believe the things you’re doing will get you there. It requires you to step outside of the present moment and think about your future self. It doesn’t have to be far, it could be tomorrow, or next week, or in a few months. You just have to think of the type of person you truly want to be. With that, you’ll be able to feel if you’re doing the right thing or the wrong thing in the present moment.

For me, it’s kind of a vague feeling. Sometimes I’m doing something and it’s very obvious that I’m procrastinating. Things like going to grab a snack every 10 minutes, checking social media or doodling. Those three things are all huge red flags for me personally, yours might be different. But sometimes, you get in a cycle of productive procrastination. Yes, productive procrastination, it’s a real thing.

If you’re not familiar the concept, I’m sure you know exactly what it is by just hearing the name. Productive procrastination is when you do things that need to be done, but you use them as an excuse to avoid doing what you know you need to do. Typically, these things are small chores that are easy to do but are somewhat time consuming. Things like washing the dishes, doing laundry, cleaning up; even exercise can fall into this category. It’s easy to use these things as an excuse because you’re not doing your work, but you’re still doing something that has to be done. It’s dangerous because you still get that same rewarding feeling that you would be getting from doing your actual work. The problem is your work still isn’t done.

Now that I think of it, I might be using this blog for that exact reason. So at the very least, I hope you find it helpful. That would make it worth it for me.

An Introduction

I decided that if I start this blog, it needs a proper introduction. If you’re reading this, chances are that I decided to go through with it. My name is Gabriel Brandt, I’m 23 years old and I recently graduated college where I studied Entertainment Design. I’m on the path from getting out of school and into a studio. I don’t know exactly what this blog will turn into, but I’ve had a lot of things on my mind lately so I decided to write them all out. Hopefully it’s a good move on my part. So far, I’ve found it to be relaxing and even a little bit fun. The complete opposite from how it was throughout my entire school career. They make writing suck. It’s a shame. You can learn a lot about yourself through writing. Try it if you’re interested. Just write down anything that’s been on your mind.

In many ways, that’s probably what this blog will be. That’s selfish isn’t it? At the very least it’s self-indulgent. I hope you don’t mind. Believe me when I say I don’t think highly of myself. I’ve got a very realistic view of my ineptitudes. This will probably just be a place to explore ideas and maybe strike up a conversation about them. So if anything strikes a chord in you or it’s something you can relate to, please reach out, I’d love to hear it.

I want to end this by saying, in a general sense, that opinions change. Something I’ve written today I may not agree with in a few years from now. I may not even agree with it in a few days from now. I do think about things a lot before I form my opinion, but I’m not perfect. It’s never my goal to offend anyone, but I can’t promise that it won’t happen. If it does, just know that I didn’t aim it at anyone specifically.

Finally, if you’re still reading this, thank you. I hope this wasn’t a huge waste of your time and I hope you find something useful or entertaining in these threads.