Daily Yamabushi

No one else

For the obsessive. For the ones who can’t get enough. For the nerds.

The people who care. The people who appreciate.

That’s who you’re doing it for.

Anyone else is irrelevant.

Until then, find out.

Toyota has this one slogan:

Impossible: ‘I’m possible.’

Or we can flip it on its head. If something is truly impossible, we ought to find out.

Time and time again.

Guarantee you are always putting your best foot forward by setting the precedence again and again.

Setting the precedence means doing something you’ve never done before. It means actively venturing out of your comfort zone, and pushing through the unbreakable barrier.

We should always strive to be better than our previous selves. We should always try and be the best version of ourselves possible.

This means one thing.

Just get started

Just a reminder, thinking about doing something and doing something are two completely different things.

If you do it right, you completely take the thinking out of the equation.

Even if it’s bad, get started. Other people will benefit and thank you for taking action.

And who knows? Future you might too.

This post heavily inspired by the words of Master Hoshino.

Let the positivity rub off

Sometimes the last thing you want to see is a positive person. Sometimes the last thing you want to see is someone who seems to be there simply to rub the positivity in your face.

Yet what’s the opposite?

The world is already full with enough doom and gloom. We don’t need people adding to it, and in fact, the opposite is true.

Positive people always seem to know something we don’t. They are always smiling or happy about something, and we need to strive so it is the default for all of us.

Positive people have an imperative to be positive. They have an obligation to let the positivity rub off to as many people as possible.

Your best chance

The best chance for your chance is not one chance. It’s not the chance to make a mark. It’s multiple. It’s you doing everything you can to put give your chance the chance it needs to be a chance. It’s you giving chance a chance over and over again until one day, it strikes.

Give chance a chance. No, give it your best chance.

‘Until then, we do this’

In the meantime is a useful concept. Something’s coming up in the future, and ‘until then, we do this’.

You can use in the meantime to get some vital practice in. Or in other words, you can use it to do the thing you intended to do in the first place.

Exactly.

This is more than I could ever ask for.

Exactly.

We never asked for any of this, and yet we were given it. We were given it, and it is our responsibility to do not only what we can with it, but what we think we can as well.

Although we may not have signed up for this, it is our opportunity to do good. It is our opportunity to do well. It is our opportunity to put our best foot forward at every opportunity, and it is our opportunity to do more than we were ever asked for.

Or somewhere in-between.

There is a balance that must be struck between fill and full.

Fill is when you can’t get enough. You are striving for more, you are hungry for better. Fill is a motivating factor that pushes you forward.

Fill is useless without full.

Without full, you will be constantly starving. You will be stuck in a rat race with no end game in sight.

Full is when you are completely satisfied with the situation. As long as you get your fill, you have nothing to worry about. You can sit back and relax.

But full is one form of end game. Get enough full, and you’ll lose motivation to move forward. Motivation that can be provided with fill.

Fill or full. Or somewhere in-between.

Let the impossible be the impossible.

Let the impossible find itself. Let the impossible be the impossible.

Going all in and telling yourself you won’t stop until the end is one surefire way to stop things from stalling. If you follow through, that is.

Follow through. Give yourself over to the task. Say no to your nos. Get things done in spite of what your mind might tell you.

If it’s impossible, it’s because it’s impossible, not because your mind told you so.

Give yourself the best chance to win

A Warrior of the Mind is both someone who uses their mind, and someone who fights it.

That’s what you are. That’s what we are.

And we need to be ready for battle at any time.

Regular practice keeps you on your toes. It keeps your sword from getting rusty, and it helps you keep your wits about you. With regular practice, we give ourselves the best possible chance.

Give yourself the best chance to win.

That’s your soul.

We tell you to try hard at school, but still there are times you resist due to fatigue, disinterest, or simply out of spite.

Yet when you have the desire to do something creative, when you feel the spark of energy coming alive inside of you, that’s not us. That’s your soul. It’s not some external influence, it’s internal, and that alone is reason enough to continue.

(Try hard at school. You need that knowledge and experience so you can harness the power of your soul)

Get one up on The Resistance. Let your art shine through.

“Sounds like someone’s got a case of the Mondays!” – Office Space.

How about a case of The Resistance? The enemy of creativity that Stephen Pressfield so eloquently describes.

Is your excuse really an excuse? Or has The Resistance found its way into your head?

If you’re thinking of giving up on a creative project, it’s worth taking a moment to consider the true reasons why. If it’s something getting in the way of you living your life, then by all means, give it up. If it’s not though, if you’re doing it for the sake of creativity, for the sake of using your creative juices, at the very least I’d consider continuing in some form or another.

Our creative juices are what drive us. They give us a reason to get up in the morning, they fuel us. But if we give in to The Resistance, if we just let The Resistance have its way, then we’re left with a shell of a human.

Don’t let The Resistance take your creativity away, especially not for vanity metrics. Keep at it and put The Resistance in its place.

It has already given you everything

The universe owes you nothing. It has already given you everything. Anything else is a bonus.

If things don’t turn out as you’d hoped they would, remember that the universe owes you nothing. That you being here is thanks to miracle after miracle after miracle, and that if you are still standing, you still have another chance to get it right

We are blessed to even be here. That you are reading these words (and I am writing them) is thanks to miracle after miracle in perpetuity. This moment we have right now is the most precious thing there is, and we need to treat it as such.

Worth having? Worth building.

Train yourself. Train yourself. Give building your habit its best chance by giving it a decent go. Try and build your habit everyday for the best part of a month. If you can sustain it that much, then it might just be for you. If not, well, you might need to try a different approach.

If a habit is worth having, it’s worth building.

Give up, or get smart

‘F*ck it’ can go either way.

Pressure does funny things to people. The constant barrage of life can and does affect us in ways we cannot always predict nor comprehend.

Of course things aren’t ideal. But not ideal keeps you on your toes and keeps you pushing forward for better. Even then life throws a wrench in the mix.

Yet we can do something about it.

If it’s really something we want, we can find a way to achieve it.

But the choice remains. Say ‘f*ck it’ and give up, or get smart.

Let the good stuff shine through

There’s something to be done here. There’s something that can be changed for the better.

I can make that change.

When you see yourself in the mirror, when you sit down in front of your family, when you sit down in front of the computer, focus on the change you can make. Think about the positive energy you’re bringing to the interaction, and roll with it. Let that good stuff shine through. Let the change happen.

Make that change.

Put it in yourself

Back yourself. You have what it takes. The only thing that is stopping you is you. What will it take for you to get out of your own way?

Do that.

Projects with the potential to change our world give us hope. They keep us on our toes and keep us hungry. Even if it’s only a small thing, it’s worth pursuing. Even if all that’s standing in our way is ourselves. It might change our world, after all.

Dive right in

The longer you stand on the diving board, the longer it gets. Sooner or later you either sink into the water, the board snaps and you fall right in, or worse still, you reach the other end of the pool.

Embrace the change

Change is inevitable. Things change and we change. Sometimes we don’t like when things change, and we fight our own change because of that. Yet sooner or later, we’re going to have to change because circumstances dictate it.

Don’t fight it. Embrace it. Be constantly on the lookout for change. Look for tiny tweaks or slight improvements at the same time you think of big picture changes. Be constantly aware that change is on the horizon, and that’s it’s a good thing as it keeps you growing.

Be bold in your change. For all we know, you may well be ahead of the pack.

Use it as one

Jealousy sucks in the moment, but it’s also a great motivator.

When I was doing a study abroad in Japan many moons ago, I clearly remember walking past an obnoxious white guy talking with his friends in fluent Japanese. It’s possible he was born and raised here, but it didn’t stop me from feeling jealous that he was able to hold a conversation in the language I knew was mine to learn.

This was fuel for the fire.

So I used it.

It was essentially the perfect example of what I wanted to do, besides the obnoxious part of course.

Jealousy is when someone else has what you want, and you want nothing more than to have it. This doesn’t really work for material possessions, but for something like soft skills that are attainable, jealousy can ignite a fire in you and show you what’s possible if you just put yourself to the task.

Get on the right track through discipline

Discipline is how you build consistency, and consistency is how you get results. But there are different degrees of discipline.

If you’re able to keep up a habit for a long time, well done, but are you keeping it up well? Are you following through with your original intentions for the discipline, or allowing yourself a bit of unnecessary leeway?

There’s nothing wrong with that. Just you have to be aware that lowering the degree of discipline means lowering the effectiveness of the results. If you’re ok with that, then great! If not, or if you find yourself wanting in the results department, then you need to look at your discipline systems.

Discipline is so important. It’s often the most important thing that stops us from doing or getting the things we want. Or said another way, mastering our discipline is how we can do and get the things we want.

If only it were as easy as flicking on a switch, you say. Yet at the very least it’s fair to say an understanding of this core facet of discipline can help put you on the right track.

Procrastination means a certain degree of true freedom

I want to be able to procrastinate.

You don’t have to be ‘at work’ every waking hour of the day. Having the time, energy, and importantly, money, to procrastinate sounds like a wonderful thing. We don’t always have to be productive machines. We don’t have to be switched on 24/7, or at least, we shouldn’t have to. Anything that forces us to do so is unnatural, and should probably be avoided.

This is of course at odds with the modern-day marketplace. I’m not saying you should be paid to procrastinate. If you’re in a paid job, it’s your job not to procrastinate, so don’t! What I’m saying is that it’s admirable to have yourself in the position where procrastination is not such a negative thing. If you’re in that position, it shows that you have built up a certain degree of true freedom to let your mind explore free from responsibility and discipline.

Until then though, well, we have some work to do.

Ride the wave of inspiration

Strike while the iron is hot. That is what it means to act on your instincts, and to take advantage of what your soul is telling you to do.

A lot of the time, simply getting started is the hardest part. Striking while the iron is hot takes care of this. It gives you that initial spurt of inspiration to lead you until you’ve well and truly started the project.

If all goes well, you can ride that wave of inspiration all the way to the point of no return. To the point where whatever you are working on has enough energy and momentum to sustain itself.

But you have to strike when the iron is hot.

This post is heavily inspired by the words of Master Hoshino, especially the soul-inspiration part. See Yamabushido.jp for more.

Save time and energy from the outset

If you’re going to have to do something anyway, it’s worth doing it right the first time.

Do it right, and do it once means you do all you can to be successful the first time round. In other words, if you do the preparation right the first time around, then you only have to do the preparation once, freeing you up for other things further down the line.

Especially when it comes to accumulating knowledge, the adage changes to learn it right, learn it once.

If we don’t get something right the first time, we have to keep going back to it, wasting our overall energy.

Yet if we put our energy into getting it right the first time, all that’s left is spare time and energy to use as we wish, for example accumulating more knowledge.

Just a reminder though, revision is always a good thing!

All is not lost

You work so hard at something and you want to see results. However, must those results result from the hard work you’ve done? Can’t they be less directly related?

Although you may be focusing on one skill, you are inadvertently building another at the same time. You are inadvertently building an asset, you.

Don’t be too worried if the results don’t come to fruition. If you’re giving your best shot at something, but not getting the results you want, it’s not a complete failure to give up. All is not lost.

In other words, what will be will be. So don’t fret it.

You learn much better out there

Although scary, although full of uncertainty, the field is your friend.

You learn much better when you have no choice but to put your knowledge to the test. The field is your opportunity to apply what you’ve learned beforehand, or learn on the go.

Every chance you have to get out to the field, is a chance you should embrace with open arms like the friend it is.

Everything but the problem at hand has to wait

That’s not the problem at hand. That’s not the immediate issue. That’s not something that has an impact on the current situation.

That’s not something to worry about right now. Worry about that when it’s its turn.

I’m here right now. Let me worry about that first.

What to do when you’re stuck

There’s always something that needs to be done. When you’re stuck, that’s where you should start.

On the surface this sounds plain and simple, but it’s actually something that is quite useful. When you’re doing something creative that hasn’t been done before, or trying to at least, you need all the help you can get.

Starting with what needs to be done gets the ball rolling. It gives you that all important momentum you need to help get to the stage where you can do that creative thing you were hoping to do. Start there if you have no better ideas.