Storyliving

Pursue a fun life. Tell magnetic stories. Change in the world.

A 70-year-old family member expressed his fear of therapy. He didn’t want to spend the rest of his life drudging up old stories only to revisit past regrets or uncover he was a bad father.

I shared a story with him that I hoped would resonate.

When I got my first engineering job in New York City I was commuting from my parents house in Connecticut. Five o’clock traffic on the way home was my literal hell and if the windows were down, the world knew it. I would scream at ANY driver who made even the slightest unorthodox decision.

I was the road rage king and I hated that part of myself, but it was so hard to not scream. In the moment, rage always felt like the right choice.

I am the least angry person you know. You’d be hard pressed to ever get me to yell. But in the car… goddammit I just couldn’t help it.

I was ashamed of this part of me and I really wanted to change. So when the road rage came out, I would notice it, turn off the radio and sit with it. I would simply be curious as to what I hoped to accomplish with all this yelling.

When I began doing this, road rage Matt would tell me to fuck off. Rage was the correct response to him and he really had no patience to hear otherwise.

But I was relentless. I mean, what else did I have to do? Listen to grown men call into sports radio crying about how bad the Mets are?

Over and over, I would turn the radio off and just be like, “bro, what’s your deal?” I was never upset with road rage Matt. It was nonjudgemental. I just wanted to understand him. I would chuckle at myself as I started to realize how silly it was to have my screams echo off my windshield and reverberate back into my own ears.

Overtime, this practice natural faded. I didn’t even notice it was gone until roughly 6 years later when I was living in Colorado that someone cut me off and nearly drove me off the road. I swerved back into my lane, took a deep breath, and tuned back into my podcast (probably listening to Mind Pump… anyone??).

My memory was thrown back to those days on the Merritt Parkway in Connecticut screaming into the void and it hit me, “Whoa, that near collision didn’t even phase me!”

It’s like when you have the hiccups and you’re losing your mind trying to get rid of them (hiccup rage?) and then suddenly they are just gone and you have no idea how long it’s been since they went away.

A day came where I didn’t have to try to not let other drivers bother me. I didn’t have to convince myself to calm down. I didn’t have to pretend I wasn’t angry. One day, I just wasn’t. Road Rage Matt was gone. I had transformed.

Carl Rogers said, “The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am, then I can change.”

The truth for this family member is that there is a part of him that believes he was a bad father. Logically he may know he wasn’t, just as I knew I wasn’t an angry person. But it is true that part of him holds shame and regret from the past. There is nothing he won’t “drudge up” in therapy that a part of him doesn’t already believe and hold onto. No amount of “I love you’s” and “you were the best father” from his loved ones will convince that part of him otherwise.

It’s only by accepting his truth and being willing to look at it and love it, can he change. Then a day will come where you no longer have to lie to yourself everyday. You don’t have to spend time burying it. Pretending it’s not there. You are simply free. Free to spend your time enjoying more of the drive.

I once had a reel go viral about prioritizing fun. There was a comment in there from a man who said that I was privileged. He had 3 kids and 3 jobs and there was no way he could prioritize fun.

We ended up talking in the DMs and I eventually asked him if he could spare 5-10 minutes in between jobs to build a pillow fort with his kids and if that sounded like it would be fun for them and him.

He said he could do that and it would be fun.

I asked him, “How do you know that those 10 minutes of joy won’t ripple into your next job? How do you know because you are beaming with happiness that you won’t handle customer conflict with more grace? How do you know that the manager won’t see that and offer you a promotion?”

I’m obviously making up a fake scenario to make this all sound good, but for real… how do you know that won’t happen? Have you ever known exactly how your life will work out?

No, of course not.

You have a choice. Keep that stern look on your face because it is all just so hard for you. Or create small opportunities that make you a little happier. If either energy ripples into everything you do, which energy would you prefer be the source of your ripples?

Even if it didn’t get you the manager job. Even if you never reached any of your goals. Would it be worth it to you to look back on life and think, “man, that was fun!”

I promise you, life is going to throw challenges at you. Shit getting hard is actually a wonderful thing. It teaches us valuable lessons and builds resiliency. The problem is that we manufacture more suffering than we need to because it has been engrained into our belief system. We subconsciously choose suffering because if we don’t suffer and sacrifice, we are not worthy.

People will say, “easy for you…” and our response has to be, “no, it wasn’t easy for me! I struggled through this, this and this.”

Just as this man told me I’m privileged and I am supposed to defend myself and tell him my challenges too. I don’t want to play that game anymore.

The truth is, the thing I want most in my life is to be a father, yet here I am 36, divorced and single. And this man has 3 kids!

Lucky fucker.

Three children he gets to teach how to throw a baseball.

Three children he gets to show how to run a lemonade stand and teach the value of a dollar.

Three children he gets to teach how to communicate their feelings and express their emotions through creativity.

Three children he could introduce his favorite songs to and share stories of the ones that remind him of his parents.

Three children he gets to make laugh and build pillow forts with and remember what it feels like to be a kid again too.

Now that sounds like more fun than I have ever had. And he’s got that right at his fingertips.

Lucky fucker.

So, what if fun was your default?

What if someone said, “easy for you…” and you said, “yeah, it was easy. It was fun too because I choose to make it fun.”

It’s never what you’re doing that you truly hate, but how you’re doing it.

If you have to work a shift a McDonald’s, what if you brought stickers and handed them out to every adult customer that walked in and gave them a compliment too and they left a little happier than when they walked in?

Too silly? Too scary? I agree. It’s frightening to be silly and offer joy to the world because there will be people who reject it. And so you will use that excuse to never do it and continue to be in the same place you’ve always been.

But if I did it, you’d tell me, “easy for you, Matt. You’re extroverted and you’re this and you’re that.”

~~No. I’m scared shitless. I just chose to do it anyway.~~

Yes, you’re right. It is easy for me because I love making people smile.

What if you practiced making every moment a little more fun.

What if instead of walking around all day inside your head trying to figure it out (not very fun), you simply asked yourself, “how could I make this moment a little more fun?” and you put headphones on and listened to your favorite song. Or you got up from your desk and did a silly little dance.

What if you were having a bad day and gave the barista a compliment or called a friend a to tell them how much you love them?

It will take work for sure. You have to rewire your old patterns. You have to commit to the relentless pursuit of nonjudgemental awareness. Take challenging moments as opportunities to understand why you choose to suffer. Maybe you begin to chuckle at yourself as you start to realize how silly it is to have your screams echo off the windshield and reverberate back into your own ears.

Maybe you finally accept yourself exactly as you are, so you can change.

Overtime, a day will come where you don’t have to try to have fun. You don’t have to convince yourself to stop ruminating. You don’t have to pretend life is full of opportunities to have fun. One day life just is more fun… You have transformed.

It’s like when you have the hiccups and you’re losing your mind trying to get rid of them and then suddenly they are just gone and you have no idea how long it’s been since they went away.

You are simply free. Free to spend your time enjoying more of the drive.

What if fun became the default?

How would you like to join an 8 week container with 9 other people who are learning how to make fun the default? In the Art of Storyliving I will teach you how I have learned to make fun my default as a coach who is also trying to change the world. These two objectives are not separate, but intrinsically linked.

It’s so easy for highly self aware people to get stuck overthinking everything.

It’s so easy for coaches to focus so much on their life’s work they forget the whole point was to have fun.

I want to show you how your prioritization of fun is the thing that will enhance your work. It’s what will help you share unique, one-of-kind ideas that shift your audiences perspectives, get them sharing your work with their friends and seeing you as their guide to a healthier and happier life.

We start Monday, May 18th and it’s capped at 10 people. Click here to learn more and sign up.

With love,

Matt

PS — you can be scared and still send it. In fact, that may be the only way.​