Thursday, May 6, 2010

Getting off the rump


To steal a worthy topic from the ever-awesome Chris Guillebeau, we gotta get ourselves in motion, people. Often, our sometimes crap-tastic situations are blamed on others, or other external forces. And sometimes, which I think a lot of forward thinkers fail to mention, it is these outside forces' faults. However, as Chris points out here, a lot of it is our own failings, our own fear, and our own inaction which really causes us to miss out.

Now, let me explain this from the Monkey + Seal point of view. In this crazy world we live in, there are most definitely circumstances that are out of our control. Things like the genocide, murder, rape - terrible stuff like that is not something that you bring onto yourself with the Law of Attraction. Monkey + Seal are very understanding of how traumatic events and our upbringings are extremely difficult to work past - socialization is a huge factor in our day-to-day lives (partially because we don't even realize it).

But (and this is the big But), we can take ownership of our agency and turn bad situations around by doing the most you can do every single day. What you can do is different from what Monkey can do, or from what Seal can do, or from what Barack Obama or Kobe Bryant can do. It's not about changing your entire situation in a day (although we'd all wish it was so easy). What brings about change is doing what you, not anyone else, can do in a day. If all you can do to work towards a clean house is just wash a single dish, then do it. If you're looking to start a business, and the only thing you can do today is to google unreserved domain names, then get on your computer. No matter how small or insignificant, if you start today and keep at it, eventually you'll be surprised at how much you've accomplished.

We are all about sustainability over here at Monkey + Seal. Even though sometimes it looks like we're totally overworking ourselves in an unsustainable manner, we don't push ourselves to the point of burning out, and if we do, we know to take some recovery time. Yes, sometimes you have to push yourself to meet a deadline, or to go above and beyond, but for the most part, we like to practice sustainability, as we are artists working with socialized norms that are detrimental to our dreams. If we push ourselves too hard and too fast, our pasts can catch up with us and paralyze us in emotional poop-storms. We've since learned to recognize when we're going outside of our means and to step back and take a night off (or at least to take a break).

So I just want to advise people to take action. It doesn't have to be earth-shattering at first, but as long as you are taking constant action, things will move into place for you.

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