Today’s Dadly Daily Declaration comes from Chapter 5 (titled Drive Time, Alive Time) of Aubrey Marcus’ book, Own The Day, Own Your Life. This chapter focuses on your commute to and from work. Marcus posits that your commute can contain some of the most enjoyable and productive minutes of your morning and your evening. See it as an opportunity. It’s a choice to have alive time where you are learning, growing or practicing mindfulness.
Marcus argues that turning your commute from something you dread into something you relish relies on a two step process. The first step is to prepare and open your mind. Step two is to flex your mind and fill it. Or, as he terms it: mindfulness and mindfillness.
Step 1: Mindfullness
Marcus recommends a practice taken from Native American-trained tracker and author Tom Brown: The Wide Peripheral Gaze. Open your eyes as wide as they go without engaging any muscles of the face. Keep your focus relaxed in the center of your vision. With your mind only, become aware of everything happening at the periphery of your vision. Then, become of aware of everything, still without focusing on anything at all. Breathe with your belly. Feeling freshness and lightness, of a clear mind? That is mindfulness meditation.
Step 2: Mindfillness
Mindfillness now animates and fills the rest of your commute up. Marcus advises to spend the rest of your commute to studying and broadening your understanding or base of knowledge. Listen to an informative and thought-provoking podcast or to an audiobook. I Am Dadly recommends the following podcasts:
- Aubrey Marcus Podcast
- Joe Rogan Experience
- Dan Carlin’s Hardcore History (especially Revenge of the Khans)
- Jocko Podcast
- Tangentially Speaking with Dr. Christopher Ryan
- The Tim Ferriss Show
- The School of Greatness with Lewis Howes
Today’s Dadly Daily Declaration follows:
If you are going to own the day, you have to own the hour, and you have to own the minute. These minutes are precious things. They are the only currency we spend every day whose value fluctuates wildly. Spend your minutes investing in your future self, filling your emotional coffers, and building value and enjoyment, or spend minutes depleting your emotional bank account…We all have the same amount of the only currency that matters: time. To spend your minutes well–that is the only goal of a life well lived.
