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 Turn 200 Words Into A Book
Almost every one of these is around 200 words.Every post is small, readable, and only focuses on one thing.Every post is fine by itself, but together they are a track record of intention and action.I'm somewhere around a few hundred blog posts.Together, that's a book.
It didn't happen all at once, that's impossible.
It happened every day.Principle: Big hairy, audacious goals are actually made up of lots of small, achievable goals.
2 Minute Action
What's your book?How will you break it down into blog posts?Reply/Comment and let me know what you're working on.I'd love to help break it down into actionable pieces with you.
How Long Do I Have to Stick It Out?
Okay, so change happens over time."Give it time" and "if you just work hard enough" have become common mantras.But how long do we have to suffer through "no pain, no gain" before we see results?If you're talking about exercise it's around 6-8 weeks. This is why everyone is in the gym in January and no one makes it through February.It takes too long to see results.If its a musical instrument, it's about 2 years.And for 2 years your fingers hurt, you're clumsy, and it's hard to know if you're going to get the hang of it.If its a yo-yo, it's about 45 minutes.But remember that for 45 minutes you're swinging it around your head, whacking your elbow, and breaking stuff in your living room.It hurts a lot for 45 minutes--but then it starts to work. And now you're going 'around the world' and 'walking the dog' with no problem.But how could you know it would only be 45 minutes of pain? How could you know if it would take a year or 3 years to learn the clarinet?Sure, you can guess how long it might take--but if you can't know, its smart to know if and when you should quit.Quitting before you start is possible only if you know that the path ahead will NOT help you achieve your mission and if you know that the task is not responsive to blood, sweat, and tears.If the outcome is not going to give you immense validation or check off some major life goal, it might not be worth years of your life.If the outcome is not possible with harder work or longer hours, it might not be worth your time either.So the question isn't "how long should I stick it out?"The question is: "Is the outcome of success worth whatever it takes?"Just remember that you have a lot of say in defining "outcome," "success" and "whatever it takes."
2 Minute Action
Answer these questions and let me know where they take you:What's something you've failed at?Do you believe it's because you have no talent or have some other shortcoming?Would hard work and time make success possible?Is this definition of success actually achievable?