Identify your core purpose and intentionally build your life, work, and relationships around activities that align with it, ensuring your energy is used effectively for impact and connection.
Re-evaluate your professional and creative pursuits to ensure they are genuinely meaningful to you, rather than solely driven by external expectations or what you perceive others might find interesting.
Approach activities, especially those you love, from an internal impetus and desire, rather than guilt or obligation, to foster a more trusting and fulfilling relationship with the activity and yourself.
Pay close attention to early warning signs of physical or cognitive exhaustion and proactively stop or adjust activities (e.g., leave a party, take a cab, plan your day to avoid energy conflicts) to prevent debilitating crashes.
Adjust your daily schedule to ensure sufficient sleep (e.g., 10:30 PM to 7:15 AM), allow ample time to wake up, and meticulously plan activities to avoid overexertion, especially for cognitively demanding tasks.
Actively build a support system by asking for help and delegating tasks, which creates beneficial structures for everyone and allows you to prioritize self-care and focus your energy more effectively.
Foster trust in all relationships, both with yourself and others, by prioritizing open communication and genuine connection over a rigid focus on checkboxes and continuous improvement metrics.
Turn to music, either by listening or playing, as a tool to process and express difficult emotions, allowing you to feel and validate them even if you cannot fully understand the underlying details.
Engage in activities that demand both openness and focus (like playing an instrument or a challenging hobby) to regularly achieve a state of flow, where time seems to disappear, and you feel challenged and engaged.
Make music a constant presence in your everyday life by singing, playing instruments, and trying new ones, fostering community, shared experiences, and personal enjoyment.
Utilize shared music-making (e.g., joining a band or playing with others) as a fast and non-verbal method to connect with people, especially when other social connections are challenging.
Dedicate solitary time to practice and refine a skill, allowing for focused progress and personal reward, which can then lead to more rewarding and meaningful interactions when shared with others.
Understand the distinction between simply playing through a piece for enjoyment and practicing, which involves analytical decisions and focused effort to improve specific aspects of your skill.
Recognize that experiencing adversity can provide a valuable opportunity to appreciate aspects of life and personal abilities that were previously taken for granted.