Understand These 3 Concepts And Move On From Anything
Sometimes you just take a beating.
It’s not always because of anything you can control—it’s just part of operating in a world with other sentient beings and physical forces.
Pretending it didn’t hurt or avoiding the process of understanding where the pain comes from just makes it worse later on.
What’s difficult is spending your whole life converting the operations around you into processes you can control, being successful at it, and then facing something painful and uncontrollable.
Learning to let things go and move on is just one of those things that takes a lifetime to which to adjust.
Sure there are some skills we can master while we’re here, but there’s really no end point.
The only "point of arrival" is the end of life, really.
- You can get in shape, but you can’t ever finish eating healthily.
- You can work nights to pay for college, but you can’t ever spend enough on your kid’s education.
- You can become a race car driver, but you can still get rear-ended at a stop sign.
The goal then, shouldn’t just be to take control of everything, but to understand what we can and can’t achieve—and then spend our resources moving toward those achievable goals.
In the meantime, while we’re moving, it’s good to remember that we sometimes take a beating regardless of how reasonable the goal is.
In fact, we might get beat up just sitting at home where we thought it was safe.
So, it’s not useful to drop out when it hurts. Pain just doesn’t have a good enough correlation with circumstance to be the only factor in our decision.
It also helps, while we’re moving, to remember that adjusting to pain isn’t like flipping a light switch. It takes time and the amount of time it takes varies based on circumstance, personal experience, and predisposition.
Some lessons to take away from this:
- Pain feels like an indication that we should change direction or hide but that’s not always the case.
- Staying at home or avoiding risk can still lead to pain, so you might as well work hard to achieve what you want.
- Being at peace with an imperfect world doesn’t mean you are eternally and outwardly happy, it just means you accept the often unfair pains of life.
2 Minute Action
Reach out to someone who is in pain and let them know you’re on their team.
Take a risk (it can be a small one) that you have been considering or avoiding.
Execute a small and possibly random act of kindness.
I promise you don’t need more than 2 minutes to do any of these.
That part is all in your head.
Today is up to you and you can completely transform your outlook and chances of success in 2 minutes or less.
How To Climb A Slippery, 3,200’ Granite Wall With No Ropes
To most people, risk just looks like chance.Luck.Rolling the dice.
But this isn’t how “lucky” people operate.
The reality is, that while chance can play a role, most “lucky” people set themselves up to be that way.They practiced and practiced and practiced until they felt confident in their abilities.They had run the course so many times that doing it on race day just felt like another day.The risk was more visible.
The risk was minimized.
Alex Honnold climbed El Capitan, which is about 3,200 ft of slippery granite, in about 4 hours without any ropes.While there are some clearly dangerous factors, he had climbed the route many times over the course of 8 years and knew every pitch well.When it was time, he already knew he could do it.He had done it so many times already.He was able to believe and trust in himself.
2 Minute Action
What is a risk you could take in your life, right now?Can you rehearse some or all of it?Could you role play with a friend? Could you do it with a safety net until you get the hang of it?Take 2 minutes to break down this risky maneuver into smaller, safer pieces.Stringing them together will feel very different from approaching it all at once with no practice.