I have reached a new level of awareness of myself and people around me, that is a bit surreal. Some people might look at me and be like “Wow, Josh seems a lot more confident than he ever was”, but honestly, and truly that is not the case. I think more so, I have just given myself permission to be human and fuck up and make mistakes and not beat myself up about it all the time. I have just deliberately been trying on self-love!

Text Learn to love yourself appearing behind ripped brown paper

And honestly, I’m not particularly good at it. But, here’s the other funny thing…it doesn’t fucking matter that I’m not good at it! LOL. That revelation right there is more freeing than anything. I mean, I guess that is confidence. But, it’s not really about confidence, it’s about just living life and being myself and not really being terribly concerned with what people think of me. Like, seriously – it’s not like I have totally given this up! Just that, I’m clearing up head-space for other shit. Some of which is productive and others of which isn’t. I have been getting some really good feedback from some people on my blog posts as well as feedback on other things I post on social media.

I’m presenting things in a way I could be proud of that is true to me, without compromising on what I believe, but also with an open invitation for people that disagree with me to read as well. In fact, I’m asking you to read! For example, political posts I write, I’m never going to shy away from my progressive/liberal identity. But I also am not in the business of antagonizing people that disagree with me. Okay…maybe I do antagonize a little bit…but I’m honestly and truly doing it only 75-80% of the time to provoke interesting conversations, the other 20-25% is some combination of me just being a dick and/or self-righteous. Those two methods of mine are not mutually exclusive, btw – but they can be.

That and I have been encouraged to write more by some people that just got turned on to my blog. That always makes a person feel good about himself. YAY me! I realize that not everything I write will be a Home-Run, or even necessarily good. I aspire for everything to be good. And I can tell you that some posts have taken much longer to put together than others. But, then there are times where I write, and I swear it’s like something else in me is writing. Of course, it’s me, but it’s me in a different state of consciousness. Some might call it flow-state. Could be… I think I heard about it on James Altucher’s podcast with Steven Kotler might have been this episode. And they talked about Kotler’s book The Rise of Superman , which talks all about reaching the “Flow State” for humans is when you are at your most productive and are totally IN THE ZONE!

This was quite a few years ago mind you like 2014-2015 I heard this, which is all kinds of weird on so many levels. Life has been moving so quick. And this book has been on my que to read for…almost 5 years now. LOL! Writing is such a good outlet, where words just go on a page and can stay frozen in time. Something freeing about that. Especially since I think the world is moving faster than it ever has….and I believed this 19 years ago, and I believe it even more now.

Anyhow, I wrote this super duper-late at night (for me at least). But you all won’t see this until tomorrow (or much later today should I say). SOME MIGHT SAY!…..

BTW – How about the fact that this was written 19 days ago on Valentines Day…Let’s just say sometimes if there isn’t enough love for oneself, we sit on projects and things we are working on for too long. Here’s to Self Love!!!…and Superman 😉





-JPJ

PS – If you enjoyed this post of mine, and are curious to read more about “Self-Love” or things of that nature, I invite you to check this piece of mine on “Self-Praise” https://joshoffthepress.com/2019/01/07/in-praise-of-self-praise/

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