It was 3am and I couldn’t sleep. I felt a wave of anxiety for no reason at all. Crippling, existential dread.
That day, I could feel my heart racing nonstop. And I felt angry about everything. I was on edge all day.
This anxious rage lasted weeks. And I had no idea why. My friends and family speculated about its cause - maybe I was working too much. Maybe I wasn’t drinking enough water.
But nothing I changed had any positive impact.
And then one day I was watching an interview with director Steven Soderbergh, and he was discussing the evolution of digital vs film cinematography.
And he said this: “I would never want to be perceived that way… as someone who’s static. That’s unnatural. Actually stasis is an unnatural form of being. Because nothing in this universe is static. Everything is moving forward.”
That’s when it clicked for me. I realized I have been in a position where I feel static. I haven’t grown or leveled up or tread new ground in too long… and I’m hungry.
Stasis is death.
As I get older, time moves quicker. And as time moves quicker, I move slower.
The other day I had dinner with a friend of mine, and we were chatting and I realized I hadn’t seen him for 6 months! I could have sworn it had only been a few weeks! But somehow the days blend together and boom six months have gone by.
Even writing this, I realize that I said I had dinner with him “the other day,” but in reality, that was already four months ago.
Time marches on and you can’t fight it, you can’t stop it, but you can do your best to keep up with it.
As Steven Soderbergh said - stasis is an unnatural form of being. Yet so many of us fall into this trap where time flies by and we get stuck in one place. Society is not structured in a way that catapults everybody to self-actualization. That’s something you have to fight for. Something you have to keep running toward. And you have to be careful when you stop running to catch your breath, because you might forget to pick it up again. And then six months fly by and you realize nothing’s changed and every day is the same.
So this is why I had so much anxiety and rage bubbling beneath the surface. I was antsy. You know that feeling when you take too much preworkout and your skin starts to itch and you can’t sit still? That’s basically what was happening to me. But I couldn’t channel it until I knew what the problem was. And see now… now I know what the problem was.
Take a step back and look at yourself. Look at your entire life. Who do you want to be? Where do you want to go? And where are you on that trajectory? Are you sprinting toward your next destination? Or are you stuck in the mud?
Stasis is a self-destructive pattern. If you have even a half ounce of self awareness, you’re aware of some of your self-destructive patterns. Yet you still do them.
I was going through some of my old journals from a couple years ago, and the entries looked almost identical to the ones I wrote last week. Like what the fuck is that about?
It’s crucial that we look at our lives from a wider perspective. Who’s telling us what to think? Who’s dictating how we behave? Are we or are we not in control?
I never want to be static. I don’t want to feel static and I don’t want people to think I’m static. Yet the fact is that 99% of people are totally static. Most people never change, they barely grow, and they’re stuck their entire lives.
But with greater self awareness, greater perspective, and a hunger for evolution - we can absolutely catapult ourselves forward. But it requires constant vigilance and an insatiable desire for growth.
And everything has the potential for growth. You can grow as a person, as a partner, as an artist! You can eat better, exercise more, work faster, think bigger, and create better.
But what you can’t do is remain static. Because even stasis quickly becomes decay. And even though decay is inevitable, it can be delayed.
So think about yourself. Think about what has remained unchanged. What problems have remained consistent throughout the days, weeks, months, years, or even decades? It’s time to evolve. It’s time to fight for your own survival.
Stasis is death. Stasis is unnatural. But tragically, stasis is where so many of us spend most of our time. And I don’t know about you… but I fucking reject that. I ain’t about it, and I refuse.
One year from now, I will be a different person. Fuck it, I might even wake up tomorrow a different person if I really feel like it.
And you can do this too. Transformations happen every day. Your new incarnation could be the tipping point that changes everything.
But you have to embrace it. You have to be fearless and open-minded. Because evolution at speeds this rapid can be painful. But it’s worth it.
We cannot be static anymore. It’s unacceptable.
I can feel that I’ve been starved creatively, and I’ve let external forces stifle me in a way that I wasn’t even aware of. But now I’m awake. And I’m fucking wired.
Since I’ve had this realization, my emotions have shifted. I’m not as angry or as anxious anymore, but I am restless. See it’s important to channel this energy into the shift. Because it’s not easy to change everything. It’s not easy to become a new person and level up your entire life. So you need as much inertia as possible to get the ball rolling.
And once it starts rolling, you’ve gotta keep pushing so it never slows down. Because if you can move a little faster than the ball, then you can build momentum as you push it. And that’s when things really get crazy.