Joe Balcom | Unparalleled Leadership
All of my writings and musings on the mind, including strategy, non-conformity, mental health, and more.
It’s New Year’s Day. If not hungover, you wake up with a fresh outlook on life. Ready to start life anew and better than ever. You have your protein shake ready to go. You lace up your shoes to go running as part of a new daily routine. You threw out (or ate) all those…
“The one guy who isn’t rowing has time to rock the boat.” -Jean-Paul Sartre The pessimist lives a fairly safe and happy life. But not a fulfilling one. The pessimist goes in with low expectations, and often comes out not so disappointed when things don't go well. The pessimist prefers not to take chances, risks,…
“It's not the years in your life that count. It's the life in your years.” Abraham Lincoln I'll be turning 30 years old in a few days. Yikes. I remember turning 20 like it was yesterday. It’s hard to believe 10 years has passed in such a flash! I’ve been told that time seems to…
The moments of deepest contentment in my life have come in moments when I am forced to accept the impermanence of it. I knew it was coming. That text or that phone call would come, and I wouldn’t know how to handle it. Then, at 2:00pm on Thursday, the dreaded text came through: my grandfather,…
No one is watching. No one is listening. No one cares. It’s funny, when you want to send something out to the world, those words are among your greatest fears. But when you want to keep something in from the world, those words can bring you the greatest comfort. So, what happens when those two…
If you want to free yourself from the past so you can fully move forward into the future, confront your irrational fear of vulnerability. Discuss your fears and insecurities with the world. Or at least with a friend. Growing comfortable expressing yourself with vulnerability, with full authenticity, will open an entire world of possibility that…
"Reading books is the real-life version of collecting mushrooms in Super Mario.” — Random guy on Twitter To begin the process of revolutionizing your life, a good place to start is with a few life-changing books. Ever walk down the aisles of a bookstore and feel an intense FOMO on all the books you want…
I'll admit it, I'm a chronic procrastinator--and I’m taking a 30-minute procrastination break by writing this. Odds are, if you are reading this, you are procrastinating as well. Let’s just be real, we all do it in one way or another! We drift off into a habit, a crutch, or a comfort in order to…
If you are having difficulty discovering your purpose in life, start by defining your 12 favorite problems. We often feel lost in life when we lack purpose. Traditionally, we have been trained to rely on our ideas, our passions, and our skills to find direction. While this puts us on track to find something, this…
Your success is inversely related to the number of excuses you’ve made in your life. Let’s face it, we all make excuses. Excuses are a part of life. But do they really help? Of course not. There is a fundamental imbalance in the economy of excuses: everyone likes to make excuses. Nobody likes to listen…
In this post, I’m going to take you to an unfinished jigsaw puzzle table, into a forest fire, and to (but not on!) a roller coaster. This short journey you are about to experience will take some sharp turns and tangents, but by the end, I promise that the essence of this post will not…
Paradigm shifts are fundamental changes in our thinking and are powerful influences in what become our habits. They can fast-track our formation of new habits, unlike any other experience. So, what if I told you some of your good habits can be formed in a small moment--a blink of an eye? Habits are the building…
Follow these simple guidelines for an extraordinarily ordinary, dull, and monotonous life: Believe everything people tell you (especially those you agree with). Try your hardest not to stand out. Stay close to home or within a 20 mile radius (preferably less). Get a job for the money, not for the meaning it brings to you…
Replace the need to perpetually prove yourself right, with an ingrained reflex to prove yourself wrong. Visualize climbing a thousand-foot ladder up the side of a steep mountain face. You desperately want to reach the plateau so you can rest, enjoy the view, and prove to everyone else that you are strong, determined, and superior.…
Orthogonal is an unusual word. Orthogonal is a unique word. Orthogonal is an orthogonal word. Here’s an easy way to think of this concept: Imagine one straight and narrow line on a graph (g), traveling in one rigid direction in perpetuity. Now imagine a line (P) branching out from your original line, like so: Another…
"A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook…
How to Keep Your Soul and Find Meaning Using the Paradox of Value "Everything in life is truly free, if you keep your soul.” This was the vivid and profound message in my head when I woke up from a dream the other morning. The message itself was engrained in my brain, no messenger. I…
In life, there are two types of people: strategists and gamblers. Chess players and card players. Only one wins in the long run. 1:00am, Las Vegas, NV The casino floor is packed. 1 AM in one of the world’s busiest casinos is not the best time or place to be wandering aimlessly to look for…