Mindful & Driven | John Mashni
Live Life With Joy As There Are No Ordinary Moments
You can choose to view the world with wonder
The fact you can read this today is incredible.
You need to have both the senses to take in the information and the brainpower to understand it. We both needed access to devices that let us view information from a web that only exists digitally. For most of human history, what you’re doing would seem like magic.
Yet we take it for granted.
John Mashni, a full-time lawyer who somehow also wrote a bestselling children’s book, views the world through a different lens. Years ago he was burnt out doing a job he hated but his wife held an intervention. She told him he was going back to law school to study because it's what deep down he wanted. The return to school gave him the time to reinvent himself to a far more positive frame of mind.
For John, there are no ordinary moments. Each interaction we have with the world has the potential to be special. It doesn’t need to be flashy or Instagram-worthy but it can still live on in our minds for decades afterward. I confess I sometimes fall victim to despair but taking John’s advice fills me with joy instead.
This article is based on the Mindful & Driven episode with John. You can listen here or find the YouTube video at the bottom of this article.
Right now counts forever
How much attention do you pay in conversations with your loved ones? People won’t be around forever but their memories can be.
John still remembers conversations he had with his grandma before she passed away 20 years ago. He loved her and cherished each word she told him and is now passing on her stories to his kids. He dreams one day they’ll be telling their kids about how much of a badass their great-grandma was.
Yet for these stories to survive, you have to be in the right mindset when you listen. If you’re distracted by what’s on the TV or what’s happening on social media, you’ll forget. Something which could have lasted forever has instead disappeared.
I’m a product of my age and am told off by my family all the time for my absent-mindedness. I can’t think of any justifiable excuse for my behavior and hope to be better.
Be open to different experiences
Minimalism took the self-help world by storm a few years ago yet John thinks it swung too far. We say “no” too much.
We don’t always know what’s best for ourselves and pure rationality could lead to missing out on moments that live in our hearts for years. His wife once didn’t want to go to a festival with a new group of friends because it felt like too much effort. At John’s pestering, she went and those people are now her best friends!
Life doesn’t always make sense and can’t be planned to the moment. I try to be as efficient as possible with what’s in my control to allow myself the space for spontaneity. The random experiences can sometimes unlock new levels of joy in your world.
There are no ordinary people either
It can sometimes pay to be irrationally kind to strangers too. John described his beliefs about the importance of each person using a parable from the bible. Then we both geeked out on Marvel’s Captain America.
Without spoilers, one of his most famous lines is “We don’t trade lives.” It’s this idea there’s no one who can just be sacrificed because everyone matters. While you are the main character of your own life, it’s easy to forget other people have stories as deep and amazing as our own. We may make snap judgments but we only see a tiny fraction of who anyone else is.
It blows my mind to think about the vastness of human thought happening this very second. Sometimes we need to take a moment and appreciate what a tiny speck we are in the universe to realize how lucky we are to be alive. Learn other people’s stories because it’s a privilege we are even able to.
I hope you found these tips useful and can see ways you can apply them to your own life. If you’d like to hear John talk about it with me in more detail, check out our conversation in the video below.
