❧ Eric Portelance

I’ve been going at life pretty hard for the past month or so. Between the combination of work, organizing TEDxToronto, and some kind of social event almost every evening, the pace has been a bit hectic. But I realized I was starting to wear myself out and spread myself too thin. So I forced myself to spend the past two nights at home recuperating, rebuilding, and doing some thinking about future projects that I’d like to tackle.

Slowing down so abruptly can be pretty hard. Sean and I have talked about momentum on Attention Surplus a few times now. Most notably in Episode 13, Rolling the Rock Uphill. I’ve found it difficult to slow down so quickly and find that balance again.

One of the things I got around to doing that I had been putting off was answering questions on 10Q. The site’s premise is pretty simple. Each day, for ten days, they release a new question that you have to answer. The goal is to reflect on the past year and what you’d like to accomplish over the next year. At the end of the ten days, the answers are saved and emailed to you in a year, giving you an opportunity to consider what you had written.

I want to share my answer to today’s question, because it touches on something that I’ve recently learned is truly important to me.

Q7. How would you like to improve yourself and your life next year? Is there a piece of advice or counsel you received in the past year that could guide you?

Keep pushing. The most important thing in life is to surround yourself with incredible people who challenge you to be a better person and lead you to memorable experiences. Life’s too fucking short to sit around doing nothing. Stay connected with those who inspire you and find new people who will push you even further. Put yourself in a position to always have the capacity and enthusiasm to say “yes” to those unique life moments.

Ask yourself two questions:

1. Have you had any life-changing, memorable, crazy, and inspiring experiences this past year?

2. Who are the people in your life who inspire you to be better and push you to explore these types of experiences?

If you can’t immediately answer those questions, you should probably be doing some hard thinking about them and the type of person you want to be. I’m proud to say I’ve had some life-changing experiences over the past year, and have managed to surround myself with a group of awesome crazies who make me a better person every day. It’s trying to figure out how to keep the momentum going that’s the tough part.

✳ introspective ✳ personal ✳ experiences ✳ life ✳ people ✳ work