Thunder and lightening, we had a sudden storm yesterday morning in Seattle that knocked out the Internet in the entire apartment for the whole day. Without TV and Internet, I didn't know what to do with myself in the evening when I had planned to catch up on email.
So I turned on the iPad, looking for an app to kill some time with. I remembered that I had downloaded the Korg Analog Synthesizer app when it was on sale a few weeks back, but never got over the initial curiosity to actually understand how it works.
I opened it up, studied the sample song, then proceeded to make a sound, a loop, a song.
Before I knew it, it was 12:30am and both my wife and my dog had gone to bed while I was nodding my head to the beats I had just created. I was so excited that I had forgotten the time.
And I had the best night of sleep I've had in a long time.
I woke up this morning refreshed and excited. None of the usual stress bothered me. I felt alive, and had a deep desire to create and to keep charging ahead.
It's very easy to succumb to our daily stress. No matter how much we love what we do, the actuality of business and the real world can kill our excitement slowly when things aren't progressing fast enough, when people aren't getting back to you, when you are misunderstood...etc. A good friend told me the story of how much he loved music, and how starting a startup in the music space killed his passion for music.
When we lose that excitement, we lose the all-important motivation to get up early in the morning and make things happen.
This catches up to me more frequently than I'd like to admit. And when the excitement is absent, I sleep in, I slack off, I simply can't be bothered.
Then nothing gets done, the stress piles up, and the vicious cycle continues.
The only way out is to get yourself excited again. Find out how. It might be reading a great book, playing unique games, watching TED talks, or writing. Take time to do it - this is great use of time for your life, AND for your business.
For me, it's making music - it allows me to just be creative without having to worry about numbers, and it gets me super excited about making things happen once again.
What do you do to keep yourself excited?
(Iceland Airwaves, one music festival I can't wait to go to. This is a documentary I first saw on a flight from Iceland to Seattle in April 2012.)
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