Cut Them Off. Yes, I Said It.

How to Ruthlessly Excise Negativity From Your Life

Check-In

I find myself in an extraordinarily trans period of my life. What I mean by that almost every part of my life is in transition.

Next Monday, June 15, marks the final day at my corporate job that I’ve been with for 7 years. (Yes, my part-time transition process at the company took a while). I will become a full-time freelance artist who is not working a part-time job for the first time in my life.

Next month also marks my one year of creating on social media on July 8. If people says “nothing much changes in a year”, they are immensely incorrect. To mark the occasion, I am returning to the meditation retreat in Arizona where all of this started, and can’t wait to discover what’s new.

Boarding Pass

Before I dive into today’s thoughts, I want to offer a small apology to my regulars, for I have neglected my Substack for a month. If you follow me on any of my socials, you may have noticed that I was posting twice a day for the entire month of May as part of my ‘Clearing Customs’ series, which you can check it out here, and that took up all my bandwidth and social battery.

The good news is, it is now June, and we are back in full swing. I’m back penning my thoughts. I’m committing to lots of content across all my socials, including Substack, more to come, so stay tuned.

It’s also Pride, so it’s probably homophobic if you don’t subscribe to this Substack :P

The Flight

To the journey we embark on today, I’d like to start with the obvious; but a thought that is often forgotten.

Yes, read that again: Time is your most limited resource.

All of us have a finite amount of time on this Earth. Yes, we have the same 24 hours in a day, but no one can determine when that amount of time will come to an end.

Sorry to make you aware of your impending mortality.

But for the first time, I get an open palette of time. Time that is unstructured. Time outside of the 40 hour a week grind. And for the first time, I feel its limitations even more drastically.

So ask yourself today, who gets access to that time?

Picture this: You decided to call a friend you haven’t seen in years. They decide to trauma dump on you for an hour. You walk away from the call in a state of disarray, without the tools to regulate your emotional state before bed.

Picture this: A friend says they will show up for you (perhaps they said they’ll make the $300 donation to help you get across the finish line, perhaps they said they’ll show up for your graduation). They say they’ll come, but bail last minute with no real emergency.

My biggest pet peeve is liars. People who say one thing, but do another. Why? Because they will continue behaving like this.

In order to manifest and achieve the life you are working towards, you need to surround yourself with people who believe in you, who are saying your names in rooms that you are not in, who are advocating for your success.

In turn, you should invest in people that you genuinely want to succeed. Maybe it’s because you see their talent and are in awe, and think more people should be supporting them. Maybe it’s because they are aligned in values with you. Maybe it’s because their hard work and positivity is rubbing off on you to be a better human being.

Positivity compounds.

If you spend an hour a day with inspiring people, people who encourage you to take positive action in your life, a daily compounding of that will yield spectacular results. Just take my 11 month of social media posting as an example. The amount of inbound emails that I have received in the last six months is tenfold that of what I have received in the last ten years.

But negativity also compounds.

If you spend an hour a day with people who try to influence you with their troubles, their negative way of seeing the world, and how they want you to commiserate with their misery, that daily compounding will also yield tremendous results (typically, for the worse).

Here’s my solution:

Cut off people who don’t take responsibility for their actions.
Cut off people who are disingenuous.
Cut off people who behave one way in front of you and another behind your back.
Most importantly, cut off people who don’t follow through.

Once you do, don’t look back.
Once you’ve made that decision, wish them well, pray for their successes.

Of course the world is large enough for all of us to exist.
But they don’t get a seat at your table.
They don’t get to reap the fruits of your labor.
They don’t get access to your garden.

Once you make peace with that, you can focus on what actually matters:
How to cultivate your time for joy.

Clearing Customs

I’ve spent a lot of my life trying to people please. Trying to make sure I’m palatable to most. Ever since I started posting on social media, I’ve gradually started to let that part of me go. The best part of letting go of a custom or belief that you grew up with, is that you slowly start to rewire your brain towards success and positivity. Letting go of traditions that do not serve the person you are becoming is the first step.

People are going to dislike you. It is part of being an artist. It is a part of being human.

As long as you focus on what matters — creating work from a place of truth with a clear conscience — everything else is just noise. Let go of the part of you that grew up learning that in order to succeed, everyone must be happy.

Today I’m here to tell you, the most important thing you can do, is to protect your time. Invest it in things that matter to you, invest it in people who mean something to you. No one, and I mean no one, is entitled to your time. Don’t give it away freely. Because it is your most important resource.

Baggage Claim

Last Tuesday, we gathered in a recording studio to record three upcoming music videos for Legendary, my solo ritual musical heading to Edinburgh Fringe this August.

I made it my mission to thank every single person who was sitting in that room with me — because I know how much it means to take time out of their day to be together in a space, in community, to create new work.

There were people who flew in from Chicago. There were people who were visiting from the Philippines and took an 8 hour bus from North Carolina. There were people who were taking time out of their day from their residencies. All walks of life. And I wanted each and every one of them to know how much it meant for me to be in that room with them.

I navigate all my relationships this way.

I do not take time for granted. I do not give away time without thought. And in this upcoming Year of Creation for myself, I am holding space for more positivity in my life, and ruthlessly excising negativity from my life.

If I can do it, you can do it too.

Arrivals Lounge

I leave you with a quote from “The Untethered Soul: The Journey Beyond Yourself”, a book by Michael Alan Singer:

“Ramana Maharshi used to ask “Who am I?” […] Ask it ceaselessly, constantly. Ask it and you will notice that you are the answer. There is no intellectual answer—you are the answer. Be the answer, and everything will change.”

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