Aerial View:

• Intro thoughts

• Mindful Minute: Seizing the moment, stillness, and presence

• Conscious Consumer: Najeau olive oil soap

• Quote of the day

• 3 key questions to reflect on

What’s up guys, welcome back. Monday’s started off hot over here, and it feels weirdly refreshing and energizing. I don’t know about you, but setting the tone on Monday for the week ahead always fires me up. Once dreaded Mondays are now a highlight of the week.

There’s been a lot of preparation lately, in both my personal life and in my businesses. Finally clicking back into action mode here, which means less aiming and more firing, and it feels oh so good. Planning is great and needed from time to time, but executing those plans and adapting on the fly is easily my favorite part of entrepreneurship so far.

When action mode fires back up and we floor the gas, creating time to deliberately slow down becomes more vital than before. Today’s Mindful Minute topic was one I wrote a few weeks back, and I’m glad I did, because the lessons learned during a slowdown are essential when clicking back into high gear. Let’s get into it.

Mindful Minute - Seizing the moment, stillness, and presence.

Lately, I’ve been really trying to be present. In doing so, I’ve become more observant of the powerful symbolism in the seemingly mundane. Today I experienced an interesting reflection around a few situations that’ve likely occurred a couple hundred times in my life already without much attention.

Situation 1: I was exploring a new area that I am moving to in a few months, mapping out some of my new walking routes. Weird, but that’s the type of thing that fires me up. We all have our things. Anyway, I had passed the road I needed to go down, and knew I would need to double back soon, but wanted to continue to see where the route along the water would go. As I approached the area that I was more familiar with, I knew there was a bridge coming up and that I would have to turn around shortly to get where I needed to go. I had about a quarter mile before the bridge, and there was a U-turn available on my left. I decided against taking that turn because I thought there would be another more opportune u-turn opportunity before the bridge. There wasn’t. So I ended up hooking a right, going back through the city, only to end up in a one way, to be right back on that same road, taking the original U-turn I had passed up.

Situation 2: So I have 2 dogs, both shepherd mixes, one black and one yellow. They’re awesome. Today I noticed on our drive to dog daycare, that when we’re in the car, my yellow dog sits on one side, puts his head just far enough out the window to get the warm sun and air on his little face, and takes it all in as we move. He stays on that side of the car the entire ride, seeing everything that he can from that side of the car, butt planted firmly in place. My black dog, on the other hand, pinballs back and forth across the backseat almost the entire ride, going from window to window. I can only suspect that he doesn’t want to miss what’s going on outside of the other window, in the event there is something better to be seen at the window in which he is not looking out of. In doing this, he spends more of his time between the two windows, missing out on most of the ride, exhausting himself along the way.

What are my takeaways from both of these situations? What are the big lessons from the little situations?

First, we have to seize the moment right in front of us. We must take the hot opportunity. We can’t constantly be holding off thinking there’s something better coming up. If we’re always chasing the next best thing, then we’ll never be able to be present with the current GREAT thing, which very well may be the BEST thing after all. This can prohibit obtaining happiness with what’s in front of us, by constantly looking for more. I ignored my gut feeling to take that first u-turn, hoping there would be a better one a little further ahead, only to end up doubling back to the first route, wasting more time and energy in the process. Summary: take the first path when it presents itself. Go all in with what’s in front of you, as you may not get a second shot.

Next, be like my yellow dog, not my black dog. Here’s what my yellow dog does. He makes a decision, and he picks a side of the car. He then owns his decision, and maximizes every second of it. How? Stillness and presence. He sits in one spot, and looks at anything and everything he can, while closing his eyes from time to time to feel the warm air on his little face. My other little guy is frantically chasing, never slowing down. The lesson here? Make a decision, own it, and strive to be present. No wavering, no second guessing. It’s okay to have an awareness of what might be going on outside the other window, but YOUR window likely has some really incredible sights outside of it, you just have to look for them. So sit back, look, and feel it all. Oh and guess what, my yellow dog has a big smile on his face the entire time. He gets it. I am learning from that little guy.

Look, being present is not easy. It’s second nature now to snap into default mode and click into our phones, but real presence is about more than just not using your technology. Presence has a second level- avoiding the pitfalls of our automatic thought patterns. Often times negative or self sabotaging, these thought patterns can prohibit us from really living and FEELING the moment. What’s the secret here? Conscious awareness. Change starts with awareness. Once we recognize we may be defaulting to internal autopilot and are more focused on the thoughts in our heads than on the situation in real life, we can override and switch back to manual. We’ll flip back to autopilot for sure, likely many times, and without realizing it until after. But as with anything, repetitions yield results. Practice. Practice. Practice. Presence is a practice.

Conscious Consumer

Quote of the week

This quote lines up with today’s content because it highights the importance of creating time to slow down. Often times we need to step away for the answers to find us- similar to the theme of last week’s Mindful Minute. Stillness is productive, never forget that.

Rise and Reflect - 3 Questions to Inspire Impactful Action and Critical Reflection

1. Do you know your top 3 most common thoughts? Are they enabling or prohibitive?

2. When was the last time you sat for 15 minutes without anything else and just observed what was going on around you in it’s entirety?

3. What are the activities that you feel most present, most alive in? How can you create more time for those in your life?

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Thank you for being here.

Sails up, eyes open.

Until next time,
Dan Baird