Hey there!
My name is David, I just turned 30 and I’m currently living in Portland, OR.
I enjoy understanding how things work and most of my intellectual pursuits these days are how the human mind is programmed by habits and society.
Most of my time is spent researching and writing my own programs aka habits to “upload” into my mind.
I’m a former 9 to 5 office worker and currently working towards a “digital nomad” lifestyle. (I want to be able to travel more than 2 weeks a year)
A long term goal is to create a communal living community where healthy habits are the dogma.
I would also like to go to space.
That’s me in a nutshell. Now here’s me out of the nutshell:
**Takes a long inhale**
Turning 30 is an interesting time in ones life, for some it feels like the gateway from youth to adulthood.
But I feel differently. You see, while many of my peers are getting married, buying houses and settling down, I’m still exploring the world and searching for who I am and what my purpose is in life.
That search has taken me on some wild adventures, some of the main life changing things I’ve done are:
-Move to New York City by myself, knowing no one there.
-Go to Nepal to do yoga teacher training
-Live out of my SUV while traveling the western US and Canada
-10 day silent meditation course
My adventurous spirit is driven by the realization that hardly anyone I know seems to be happy or to “have life figured out”. I just couldn’t accept that there isn’t a better way of living life than that. Luckily I had enough sense to break away from the heard and start asking tough questions.
Growing up, I wasn’t a very happy kid. In a lot of ways I yearned for acceptance but kept myself aloof and retreated when people reached out. Those years were tough, and I’ve hit some pretty low points, but being on my own for so long has also given me the confidence to blaze my own trail.
Honestly, these days I’m as happy as I can ever remember being. Even in the midst of some tense political polarization and uncertain environmental future.
Would you like to know the realization I had that was absolutely critical to my happiness?
Here it is:
The human mind is a mirror of the actions we take on a daily basis.
…. I wish I could see your reaction after reading that. Some of you may know this already, some of you may have an inkling of what I mean but most people haven’t internalized this at all.
The only way to truly change yourself is to change how you spend your time on a day to day basis.
When I moved to New York, I envision my social life exploding! I thought I’d have a ton a friends, pretty girls to date and being living the life I always thought I wanted: to be accepted and with the “in” crowd of New York. Moving to New York would make me a new man.
But within a few months of moving there, my life started seeming eerily familiar. Turns out, when you move somewhere new, if you keep the same habit patterns you had before, you’ll become the same person.
After moving a couple more times I begun to really understand the old saying: “No matter where you go, there you are…”
After trying to “hack” my way to happiness, I finally accepted the reality:
Your habits are what make you, you.
If you want to truly change as a person, you NEED to change your habits.
So yeah, it’s fuckin’ hard to change habits. Believe me I get it.
I’m going to write every important life lesson I’ve learned in this blog. I know you probably won’t check this every week so I send out a summary of all the posts I’ve made every month, that way you can choose an posts that resonate with you and could help you on your personal journey.
**Email prompt**
I love connecting with like-minded people so if any of this resonates with you reach out and introduce yourself!
Maybe we’ll become friends, maybe we’ll become business partners, maybe one day we’ll build a commune together to reinvent society, or maybe you’ll forget to enter your email and then forget entirely about my existence. Whatever it may be, I really appreciate you taking the time to visit my blog and I know if you’ve read this far, you have what it takes to truly build a life you’re proud of.
Namaste my friends.