Many people think they cannot have knowledge or understanding of God without reading books. But hearing is better than reading, and seeing is better than hearing. Hearing about Benares is different from reading about it; but seeing Benares is different from either hearing or reading.
One thing that feels very important to me as an artist is to continually challenge myself and push myself to do all kinds of different things.
I cannot lie: as good as it feels to get my deserved props, the best part of reading social media after I meet folks is reading, 'Mike was a nice guy.'
I don't like reading good things about myself. With the criticism and the negative things, I always think that makes me better.
When famous people are nice to me, it feels good, so I'm happy to hang out with them. It's better than being at home, depressed, reading 'The Hobbit.'
I never get enough of the adrenaline rush of hearing good music played live and played loud like this. Hearing these songs again snatches me out of the day-to-day and helps me forget all the things I usually waste my time worrying about. As long as the music's playing I don't have to do anything except listen, relax, and enjoy myself.
I guess I just like to challenge myself and push myself harder to do things that I don't think I can, to do things that other people do not think I can. It pushes me. I push my own personal limits.
I guess I just like to challenge myself and push myself harder to do things that I dont think I can, to do things that other people do not think I can. It pushes me. I push my own personal limits.
So I have loitered my life away, reading books, looking at pictures, going to plays, hearing, thinking, writing on what pleased me best. I have wanted only one thing to make me happy, but wanting that have wanted everything.
It's good for me to do things outside my comfort zone and push myself.
I don't read articles about myself. I try to distance myself from it. Reading about yourself is nice, but in the long run, it doesn't help. Concentration has to be in the right place.
I seek out things that terrify me, like an improv class. I'm terrified of sharks, but I scuba dive. I'm not good at auditioning, but I force myself to do it all the time. I've never met anybody who is fearless, but the more you push against your own boundaries, the easier it becomes to push.
And when I stopped doing that and started thinking about what feels natural and what feels right to me and started pleasing myself, then it became good.
I always wanted to be the best I could be at whatever I did. I didn't want to be the number one golfer in the world. I just wanted to be as good as I could be. I work hard, I push myself hard, and I probably even expect too much of myself.
It was time to expect more of myself. Yet as I thought about happiness, I kept running up against paradoxes. I wanted to change myself but accept myself. I wanted to take myself less seriously -- and also more seriously. I wanted to use my time well, but I also wanted to wander, to play, to read at whim. I wanted to think about myself so I could forget myself. I was always on the edge of agitation; I wanted to let go of envy and anxiety about the future, yet keep my energy and ambition.
I wanted to do an action-y thing, purely because I'm the least fit, healthy person in the world. I wanted to prove to myself that I could actually run and not get out of breath and collapse. I wanted to push myself, in that way.