A Journey of a Thousand Miles

Welcome to the first post of my new blog, which I have decided to name “Scott’s Musings”. There is no theme, except for whatever is going on in my mind at the time, or lessons which I have learned over the years that I want to share. I might also chuck in the odd poem, riddle, and joke, because why the hell not. 🙂

I already have a writing project called “Mind Over Matter”, which covers various topics including: psychology, philosophy, spirituality and self-actualisation, but I wanted a personal blog for any other topics and ideas which don’t fit into that.

For a while, I have also had a goal in mind: to become the type of person who inspires, motivates and entertains others. It’s that goal, in combination with my growing enjoyment of writing, that was the genesis for this blog.

In fact, I have achieved this goal a number of times before, but in other areas of life. For around 10 years, I have been uploading music covers to my youtube channel, and have tried to read all the comments which I have received over the years.

Between ‘you suck’, ‘331erock is better’, and ‘you look like [insert famous person]’, I would occasionally come across a positive, uplifting comment from someone informing me that my music had inspired them in some way. In some cases, I had even influenced them to take up guitar.

I was pleasantly surprised, because that wasn’t the main goal with my channel at the time; it was really just a fun side project. Having said that, in retrospect, it makes perfect sense that some people were inspired by my music and guitar playing—it’s because I had the right mindset. My mindset when learning music and playing guitar was simply because I enjoyed it and wanted to share it with others.

So here is the lesson I have learned which I wanted to share (may it be of use to someone):

Before you do anything, make sure you have the right mindset, then act from a space of authentic positivity, and watch what happens next.

It ultimately comes down to trying to be the best version of yourself, which is infinitely better than anything else, and it all starts in the mind. To achieve this, we need to have the courage to ‘risk being seen in all of our glory’, as Jim Carrey once said.

The rejection from another person may sting for a while, but lifelong self-rejection is like being put into a straight jacket and slowly turning into a zombie, whilst rotting from the inside out—I’d rather the sting.

We also need enough discipline to remain on this path despite difficulties or setbacks which are likely to occur. There is no real secret to discipline, except it becomes considerably easier if you have a worthwhile goal or purpose worth pursuing. The more compelling the goal, the easier it will be to persist despite any difficulties.

And thus concludes my first post—short and sweet. Well, definitely short anyway.

And so begins the journey of a thousand miles…