(Im)possible relationship goals

This is a thing that made me happy today.

I was listening to Brené Browns podcast, and she had two other podcasters on – Tim Ferriss (my absolute favorite podcast) and Dax Shepard, who I did not know at all. So naturally, I was curious about what this Dax guy was doing, since he was invited into such great company.

So, I checked out his podcast, and it´s called Armchair Expert.
At first glance, I thought that it wasn’t my thing, because scrolling down the guestlist it was mostly actors, and actors generally does not interest me. But some of the episodes features people like Brené Brown, Sam Harris and Esther Perel, so I gave it a chance anyway.

It turns out that I really like Dax, because he is uncompromisingly honest and open, and really does the work of challenging his own assumptions, is curious about why he does and think as he do, and seem to learn from his mistakes and listens to input from others – which translates into willingness to grow. On top of that, he is completely comfortable with making fun of himself for all the mistakes or “bad” personality traits that he either still have, or shit he has done in the past.
 
In my book, that is basically a list of the most important and interesting qualities a human being can have.

Then I discover that he is married to Kirsten Bell, and they have an episode together, that was supposed to be about the third season of the Good Place – but most of the episode are just them talking about random stuff in their life. Same with another episode they did together that I listened to after.

Here is why that was amazing to me:

Something I have always really wanted in a relationship, is to be such a state of trust that you are allowed to get really curios about each other and dig deep into why we do the things that we do.

All of us have different perspectives and understanding of situations, different patterns, reactions, baggage, expirence, triggers, humor and ALL of that life-stuff which makes us all unique.
This is also why it can sometimes take abit of work to understand others, while at the same time being the reason why it is so much fun getting to know them.

How and why we perceive any given situation differently it is literally the most interesting thing in the world to me to explore with people close to me.

I think it is a beautiful thing and I do it with my self all the time – challenging my own thinking, examining why I react in certain ways and how I can do better.

I believe in my core that the whole purpose of living is to understand yourself, others and the human condition, in order to grow and be the absolute best human you can be.

Sadly, I have not had much success doing this in my relationships.
When I ask “why” questions, people tend to take it personally, like it is an attack and then they armor up. Or, they read it as a passive aggressive judgement on my part – instead of genuine curiosity.

If I turn it around and instead of asking questions, I go into explaining why I did or said what I did, in an attempt to start that type of conversation, I get perceived as being defensive or apologetic.

For me, it it´s a way to create intimacy, understanding and growth. I want to learn about them. But sadly, it often gets perceived as instigating conflict.

I have had friends with whom I could do this, and that has given me such happiness and tremendous personal growth as a result, but it is rare in my life as it is now, and it is not a culture I have been able to successfully create in my romantic relationships.

Enter Dax and Kirsten. Those guys did just that, as if it was the most natural thing in the world. And you could feel, that to them, it is.

To me, that’s just beautiful.  

Listening to them made me feel hopeful and happy.

Right now, I just kinda want to marry both of them – but I will settle for knowing that maybe my relationship goals are not utopia after all.

Best life lesson I ever dared to learn

I can do this.

That’s it. You can make your dreams come true.

People have so much resistance to that idea. But when people say “it’s not possible” to realize some dream they have, what they really mean is that the don’t want to do the work. They want it to magically appear – just poof into existence in one glorified second. If that’s the criteria for dreams to come true, then they are right. That’s highly unlikely.
But really – how much of the good stuff happens that way?

To really step into your own agency is scary. But If you’re willing to do the work, most things are possible.

I love Marie Foleos mantra of ”Everything is Figureoutable”.
She’s totally right, and it is a very empowering way to see the world.

I get that it is scary. I get that it can seem like a monumental task, too big to take on. And it might be hard. Most things worth doing is kinda hard, because we have to push ourselves to learn, act, reach out and grow. The great thing though? That is usually also what makes it worth it.

Start by cutting it up into smaller, less scary, more edible slices.

Want to write a book? Write one page a day. That’s doable, right?

You can spend years and years thinking “wouldn’t it be awesome if..” or, you can spend a little time every day, learning about that thing. The more you learn about it, the easier it will be for you to figure out how to approach it.  Then do the work, and make it happen, one step after another.

There are very few things in life that are not possible to achieve this way.

I know the resistance will tell you otherwise. It will come up with endless reasons why you should not do it. But it lies. There is an amazing one armed concert pianist out there, FFS. And blind photographers. I have listened to about a gazillion founder-stories of people building businesses, and the all started from absolutely zero. So many awesome projects got started in someone’s crappy basement. AirBNB started because some guys rented out an air mattress on their floor, because they had trouble paying their bills.

Most of us started from zero and build from there.
That’s where you will stay, if you don’t start somewhere.
Is there really a good reason not to?  



Your sunk cost fallacy is out to get you.

I have been re-pondering the sunk cost fallacy lately.

It’s the sort of thing that can sneak up on you and influence your thinking, if you don´t keep it in check.

What is sunk cost fallacy?
Let’s say, you hate your job. There’s something else you much rather do.
But you don’t quit, because you spend years in school and you already worked there 5 years. You feel all that time already spend will be “wasted” if you don’t stick to it.

That’s the sunk cost fallacy talking.

The fact is: you already spend that time, that money, that energy – whatever the cost was,

It’s in the past. You already did all that.
It’s a sunk cost, regardless of you choose to do now or in the future.

The only thing that should influence your decisions, is who you are NOW.

What we did in the past has not been wasted, it’s just not the right thing anymore.

We are wiser and a different person than our past self who made those choices.

We learn, we grow, and we change.

Right now, I am trying to figure out what the next step is for my business.
I know I need something new – a new project, a new direction. I am not sure what that looks like yet, or how big a change that needs to happen.

But I can hear this bias in the back of my brain, whispering to me: “but it works, it runs smoothly, and you spend years building it, don’t change anything, just sit back and enjoy”. This is the sunk cost fallacy talking – it does not care that I love building things and making it work.


Staying in the status quo will not be something I enjoy.
That’s not who I am.

In my experience, there is often a much higher cost to NOT doing something.

It will be the difference between making me thrive or feeling stale.


So not woth it.




This blog is just a tool.

All the posts-it notes are definitely not doing it for me anymore.

This blog is just a tool.

It mostly exists because I can’t read my own handwriting – and writing in a document on my computer just seems weird and unstructured.
We can’t have that, now can we?

All the posts-it notes are definitely not doing it for me. The productivity nerd in me wants everything to be useful and done with intent.

Starting a blog is so 20 years ago.
But here we are.

The goal is to use this as a tool for collecting interesting ideas – within and around. It will be a place to examine the stories I tell myself and a way to get all the stuff racing around in my brain out and into form.
I am sure it will be more useful that way.

This project is also about looking for the positive stories and rewiring thought patterns.

How we think is a muscle.
It can be trained.

The brain is an instant feedback loop for our thoughts.
If we feed it with negativity, it will feed us more negativity back.

“Oh, you want to think about that time you completely failed and drowned yourself in shame? Great – here’s a replay.
On repeat.
Sit back and watch.
Ill give you a show all night long if you want.”

Thanks brain.

But we cannot blame the brain.
We started it.
And only we can rewire it.

The beautiful thing is, that just knowing that you are going to write something later, will prompt you to notice things differently, and alter the way you think about that thing.

So that is what I am going to do here.

Perfection is the enemy of creation.

To make this work, I am setting up a set of rules:

All nights that I am not out/somewhere else, I will write something.
Seth Godin would say that I should do this every day. And he is right (he is always right). But I also know that building a new practice is hard, and setting the goal too high from the start, is setting yourself up to fail. Start small with a goal that is achievable. Build from there. That is how you build habits that stick.

This blog is a personal project, that just happens to be online.
If other people end up reading it, that’s okay. But it is not the purpose. If they do, it does not mean I have to try to be interesting, relevant, funny or likable.
It does not mean I need to please anyone or worry about what they think of me.
I just have to write, and figure shit out.
That’s my job in this.
Nothing else.

I will be completely honest and open, as have always been my practice.
If this ends up getting very personal or vulnerable, so be it. It might trigger a bit of negative self-talk from the introvert in me.  “that’s so self-indulgent and self-absorbed, putting this shit online! Nobody cares what you think or about this process of yours, how dare you waste space on the internet for this”.
Well. Listen here, negative voice inside me:
It does not matter in the least. I’ll do it anyway.
There.
I´m glad we got that out of the way.

I will write in English, because for some reason, I think better that way.
But if I want to write something in Danish, that’s okay too. It is my blog.
My English is not perfect, but I am not going to care.

Perfection is the enemy of creation.