Josh Allred's Blog

Lessons learned are the ones taken into our daily actions.

We all know we are not supposed to eat the metaphoric marshmallow but we do anyway.

Humans constantly misbehave. Just based on the clock, we will compromise our values.

The ones we eternalize are the ones we truly have conquered.

Your thoughts will eventually become preoccupied with memories of the past and dreams of the future.

The challenge then is to not be dissatisfied with the life you have lived when it doesn’t match your dreams.

Dreams change. That is why it is part of your imagination. Dreams also have the tendency to be more appealing than real life since nothing is real about it.

Made famous at the Pirate of the Carribean ride/movie, it is actually a phrase from Dante’s Divine Comedy.

Hope is an enigma. We need hope to get us out of bed or to invest in a better future. But it is something we can become addicted to. Ignoring things as they are and hoping things get better without having to take the necessary steps of action.

I think our culture confuses copium with hope. Copium feeds the energy of denial while hope is the fuel of a better tomorrow.

The caution with hope needs to be to live here now while taking actions that leave everyone better off down the road.

When you win at the highest levels, you want to do it again.

Because humans are never naturally satisfied with success.

We want that high again, and some are willing to pay a price to chase that feeling.

So how does one become satisfied?

There is no easy answer here but it helps to:

Focus on the present.

Stop comparing yourself to others.

Ignore the loon noises.

And don’t take yourself too seriously.

Generally speaking, all humans worry about things they can’t control that are threats to survival. (Spoiler: Which is everything.) It takes discipline, mindset, and narration to overcome this.

We all worry about extending our life. Not to live forever, of course, but we don’t feel like we have enough time.

This is why we focus on legacy, impact, generosity, and how to make ideas spread. Because those things live in the ether. There is no expiration date.

Even today, we don’t know who invented the wheel, but we all appreciate it and recognize its impact.

Being alone and feeling lonely are not the same things.

You can feel alone in a crowd.

You can also be alone in your own thoughts.

Often, when someone is seeking constant attention, it is because they don’t want to be alone in their thoughts.

That creates tension that we often want to dissolve. So, we seek distractions like social media.

To keep us from realizing that today is the day we could turn this all around.

Endings are all the same for all human beings. So, we focus on the experience, the journey along the way, not what is inevitable.

However, because we work overtime to hide from this fact, ironically, we become goal-oriented in our capitalistic mindset. But humans have a magical ability to also transcend the physical realm. With our ideas, our words, our influence, we can live on.

We are all echoes of everyone that has come before us.

Setting goals for others is a heavy burden to place on someone.

Because what we are looking for is a success story for ourselves.

Because we are telling someone to live up to our ideals.

When we drop expectations, we can focus on what is actually happening. As a result, we can drop the storyline and spend less time in the ether (our imaginary world of wishing for things to be different).

Starting a tradition isn’t a tradition at first.

It’s a set up for a long run.

We get to decide which path/journey we want to be on.

When it’s new it’s fun.

When it’s been around it’s work.

But the meaning, the juice is when we imbed these habits and rituals deep into our identities and make them something bigger than ourselves.