Where am I? And why it matters.

Because where you are matters.

Where are you?

And I don’t mean simply where are you physically. Because whether you’re in Berkeley or Portland or Charlotte, where you are mentally and emotionally affects you deeply. In fact, where you are is critical to your happiness and your success. So in this brief article, we’re going to look at how to figure out and describe where you are, and why it’s so important.

Why it matters.

Where you are is an important question, because if you’re going to live the life you want to live, you’ve got to make time to think about where you are, how you got here, and where you’re going. Another word for this is perspective. You need perspective to live the life you want. So last week, we looked at how you got where you are. In fact, you might want to jump over there and do that brief exercise after you finish reading this article. Because in that article, we learned that in just 30 minutes of free writing about how you got where you are (“Here”), that you can get tremendous perspective. But why is any of this important? Because “…the unexamined life is not worth living,” to quote the ancient philosopher Plato.

Because you matter.

And I know. It’s possible that you feel pretty beat up right now. And whether that’s because you just had a fight with your partner, or you don’t have a reliable partner, or your work sucks, or whatever — you matter. We need what you bring on your best day. So let’s get you more best days. And one of the key steps to having more best days is getting perspective. Which means being aware of where you are, how you got here, and where you’re going.

So please do this, now.

Let’s lock in this next step. It’s like the exercise last week, with a new prompt (and no — you don’t have to do last week’s project to get the benefit of doing this project):

• Set aside 30 minutes — alone — where you can write at your computer, without interruption.
• Open a fresh document
• Set the document for single spacing
• 12 point font
• Once you start writing, write as fast as you can, without stopping to clean it up — and don’t stop until you have filled one page.
• Once you’ve filled the page — wherever you are, even mid-sentence — stop. (In other words, even though you’ve set aside 30 minutes, you don’t need to use the whole 30 minutes unless you need it.)

Your prompt for this writing exercise is: “What it looks like here.”

(And yes — you get to decide where “here” is).

I’m here to help.

And yes again — if you’d like a little help with this, let me know. This is what I do everyday with men who are not so different from you — smart, creative men who feel a bit overwhelmed at the moment. So feel free to be in contact with me. I’ll be sure to respond.

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I'm here to help you focus, overcome resistance, and get moving again.