To become you want to be (but aren’t yet) you have to start doing what you want to do (but aren’t doing yet).
Who do you want to be?
Which actions would that person take?
The questions are simple. But the path is erratic.
And that’s okay.
As long as you ask them once in a while, you’re well on your way.
The easiest path is to miss all days – you never get going in the first place so you don’t know what you’re missing.
The second easiest is to never miss a day – you’ll get where you want to go with little detours, even if you pay the cost of discipline.
The hardest (and most common) path is to miss a couple of days here and there – now you run the risk of getting lost.
We all miss a day sometimes – so we all get a little lost once in a while.
So what do we do?
We remind ourselves why we got started.
We remind ourselves where we’re going.
We remind ourselves that we’ve been lost before – and that we can always get back on track.
Who you are and what you do consistently always coincide. After all, your repeated actions create your identity.
But who you want to be and what you consistently do don’t usually coincide. Otherwise, you would already have become who you want to be.
You want to be a writer, but you’re not consistently writing? Writing consistently will bridge the gap between your current and desired identity.
You want to be a guitar player, but you’re not consistently playing the guitar? Practicing daily will bridge the gap between your current and desired identity.
Could you make your actions coincide with your desired identity?
You can do everything right and still fail.
You can do everything wrong and still succeed.
In the end, all you can do is realize that failure and success aren’t always yours to control.
In the end, all you can do is do the best you can.
Introspection prompts of the day:
What are the things you truly can’t do without?
How do you know?
Have you tried?
Are you scared to try?
If you could, would you WANT to do without them?
Or are you happy to have them in your life?
No good or bad answers. No action needed – unless you want to.
Performance gap: the frustrating gap between the way you know something should be done in an ideal world and the way you currently do it.
I know I should write daily blog posts in advance so I have a buffer in case something comes up and I don’t get to write. Yet here I am, writing this daily insight hours before the publication date.
I know what the perfect downward-facing dog pose in yoga looks like. Yet when I perform it myself, I am far off from that ideal pose.
I know all the ingredients that make up a solid, convincing speech. Yet when I write one myself, I am only able to incorporate a few of those ingredients.
Learning, then, is closing the gap between your intellectual understanding of an ideal product, action, or skill, and your current rendition of it.
Don’t be so hard on yourself for your current performance.
You can’t expect to turn intellectual understanding into mastery and internalized knowledge right away.
You don’t have to master this today.
What would happen if you don’t rush?
Maybe suddenly, time will be flush, and ideas lush..
