Getting to the heart of it.

9.26.24 // Getting to the Heart of It

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Hey everybody, and Happy Birthday to me and to T.S. Eliot and Olivia Newton-John, two major 20th century talents who share my birthday.

So, here's what's happening – You'll get some preamble and then I'll get to the meat of the matter. I'm just trying something a little bit different today and I had something of a roundabout way of getting here.

Something good happened yesterday. And while falling asleep last night, I was thinking about writing about it or documenting it or something. And I woke up this morning at 5:29am and I had an idea in my head. And it was to do this and say, "there I made something about it." I was very excited when I woke up at 5:29am thinking about this. I thought it was a cool idea. I thought it might be something really fun.

This is pre-release day for a seven hour audio experience that I spent more than two years creating. So probably I was excited in part because this is the polar opposite of that, something quick and short and spontaneous. And I considered getting outta bed and just getting to it. But as it happens sometimes, I fell back asleep in the process of thinking about it. And that's good because it's my birthday and I was hoping to sleep later than usual. In fact, I'm still in my sleeping clothes, even now as I record this.

As I was thinking about how I wanted to spend my time today, on this day that is celebratory for two reasons, I thought, "Oh yeah, I had that cool idea. Do I wanna do that?" And as quickly as I had that thought, as quickly as I thought, "that did sound kind of fun," I was instantly filled with a feeling of dread and a list of twenty reasons in my brain why I didn't wanna do that: Why it was more important to get started on the new Legend of Zelda game first; and why making a playlist on Spotify was more important. And really, Matt, it's your birthday – Wouldn't you rather just be lazy all day?

Luckily, I have learned the lesson pretty well, that when Resistance is shouting in my ear about something that's a sign that I should pay attention to, that's a sign that whatever the idea or the impulse is that Resistance is trying to counteract, that's probably something that holds some potential, that could be useful. That's what chapter three of the book is about.( I promise I won't just plug the book every 30 seconds.) So that's the first thing. I had an idea, felt Resistance, as I always do.

But this time I got to it and here we are. So what happened? Well, let me set up the context. It's been a couple of weeks of hustling pretty intensely, really pushing myself because I had this deadline. I wanted to wake up today, on my birthday, and have the website and the book and the Bandcamp pages for the book. I wanted all that to be online and operational on this day of the the pre-ordering period starting, which meant that the hard deadline was before I went to sleep last night. Whew. So, yeah, I've been working pretty hard and Resistance has been working pretty hard against me. I've been dealing with a funky lower back, various strains and pains, all sorts of little things coming outta the woodwork. And I had lots of things on my to-do list, like putting up a new Instagram page and working on stuff for that, thinking about posting on LinkedIn and lots of little details of the website, and going over a couple of audio files with a fine tooth comb because I was gonna be making them public, all of which is ... important.

I'm trying to be gracious about it. It's all stuff that's fine to do, but none of it is really the stuff that is the point to me, right? These are all things that I'm doing to amplify the work and help it to reach people and have impact. That's all very important, but a lot of it is stuff that I just don't enjoy that much. I really – to use the language of the audiobook – I really had to use a lot of MP. I had to use a lot of self-regulation energy to stick to that, right? It was a lot of grit and more than a bit of a grind to get this stuff done. It's that kind of work. It wasn't the kind of work that I was filled with joy and floating through it and getting into the flow state and all that sort of thing.

So that's a lot of what's been happening. And in the context of that, in the middle of the day yesterday, I got a wonderful message from a friend. I've shared a chapter of the book, Chapter Nine, with a bunch of people, especially people who are part of the book. And this dear friend sent me a message and said that the chapter had been helpful. That it had been, in fact, soothing and helped them to focus. And it was a really kind note. And there in the middle of all that stuff, in the middle of the grit and the grind was this message that just cut through all of it and went straight to my heart and to the heart of what the work is about. I felt it all over, immediately. And reading that message, I said aloud, "This is what it's about. This is why we're doing this." And I can call that feeling up right now, almost as intensely as it as I felt it yesterday.

That was a wonderful gift in the middle of the day, and it really provided some lift to help me get through those last six hours of doing work to meet the deadline. How wonderful is that?!? Sometimes the universe, and especially our friends, really deliver.

So that's what happened, and it really got me thinking. It got me thinking of how moving that was, and also how effective it was in motivating me, in giving me whatever mojo it is I needed to do the stuff that had to get done. And how it put me right in touch with the impetus, the purpose, the emotional reasons behind doing the work and making the audiobook and spending all the time on it in the first place.

I've got a meticulously written statement of purpose and a list of priorities, and I have spent a lot of time thinking about what really matters to me in the project. And I did work hard to stay in touch with those ideas, to stay true to what I was trying to accomplish and not get distracted from that. I would work on that in ways that were mostly intellectual again and again over the course of time. But I don't think any of it was as effective as getting that message and feeling that emotion, feeling it all the way up and down my spine, right from my heart to my gut. It certainly lit up my brain as well.

And so it had me wondering... how can I stay in touch with this? How can I stay in touch with this beyond just writing it down? Well, as I say that, I think about taking in the good and I think about Dr. Rick Hanson. You can look him up. It's something I talk about in the very first chapter of the audio book, actually.

That's part of what led me to doing this. There are so many ways that you can try to take this good experience and these good feelings and make it a part of you, to install it in your brain and in your, your heart as well, in your spirit. One of the ways to do that is to tell the story to somebody else, to record the story, and to talk about it. Even the act of vocalizing it is really effective.

So that's part of why I'm doing this for me, and also as a suggestion for you and a reminder to myself in the future. That if you can find a way to go above and beyond the intellectualized way of defining purpose, if you can find something... In this case, it was a message from a friend and I took a screen capture of that on my phone and put it in a safe place, and I put it in this other program so it's gonna pop up every week and remind me – Hey, this is what it's about, buddy.

What might it be? It could be a photograph or could be a story. Maybe it's a video. It could just be a statistic even. If you find anything that speaks to your heart and your soul in that kind of direct way, that just cuts right through the rational and reasoning part of it, or combines the rational and reasoning part of it with the emotional part of it. If you can get your gut and your brain aligned and working in tandem, my goodness! That's a thing that I'm gonna be working on. That's a great lesson that I learned yesterday at just the moment when I needed to learn it and wanted to learn it.

I guess I'm probably gonna go edit this audio, transcribe it, upload it, and there – we did a new thing. Crazy. And after that, I'll probably go try the new Legend of Zelda game – my birthday present from Nintendo.

I hope you're having a great day. I do hope you'll check out Ready for the Quest – probably you already have and that's how you ended up here. It was a labor of love and I made it for you. I feel really good about it.

Thanks for spending this time with me today. As always, I really do appreciate it. And whether I'm a little late or a little early – happy birthday to you! I'll talk to you again soon.