When chasing fame leads to your own kids not remembering your name.
When chasing love leads to fear of being alone.
When chasing success leads to loneliness.
It may be necessary.
It may be good.
It may be worth it.
As long as you’re aware there’s always a sacrifice to make.
Most people don’t really want the freedom to do anything they want, in other words, a life without constraints.
They want the freedom to set their own constraints.
To decide, “I want to spend my time writing,” instead of saying, “I am supposed to become a lawyer because that’s what we do in this family.”
To decide, “I don’t drink alcohol,” instead of saying, “My social circle forces me to have a glass when I’m out.”
To decide, “I want to live in that house, drive that car, and go on that exotic holiday, and I’m going to make it happen,” instead of saying, “I’m constrained by my talent, potential, current job, or where I grew up.”
To decide, “I have time to learn a new language because it’s important to me,” instead of saying, “I’m too busy, I can’t (or don’t deserve to) do anything nice for myself.”
Good or bad, beneficial or misguided, constraints are always there.
Because life constantly forces you to make decisions, and every decision leads to a new constraint.
Since it’s challenging to be aware of your decisions and their long-term constraining effects, which constraints do you consider important enough to set consciously (and spend considerable time and effort doing so)?
Where do you allow others to dictate the constraints you live within?
Who do you allow to dictate the constraints you live within?
Pick your freedom battles.
In his book The Art of Learning (and his podcast episodes with Tim Ferris), Josh Waitzkin, former chess player and martial artist, introduces the concept of “hidden reps” when learning something new:
I think that where the really potent, low-hanging fruit hanging in plain sight lie are in the thematic, are in breaking down the learning process into the core principles or themes you want to work on and doing reps of those. Those are just invisible to people in plain sight.
Josh Waitzkin on the Tim Ferris Podcast: https://tim.blog/2020/03/14/josh-waitzkin-transcript-412/
In other words, find “neglected skills“: situations you don’t often find yourself in and where you haven’t developed a lot of trust and confidence in your abilities yet.
Then isolate and practice them until you develop confidence and trust for that particular neglected skill.
For example, when working on his chess game, instead of practicing the “openings” like everybody else, Josh would isolate the “end games”(the final part of a chess match) and practice only these.
Most people wouldn’t think of doing that; they would always start at the opening (that’s where a chess match starts, after all) and practice the end game only as an afterthought, deep into their practice session when they had already spent all their energy on the opening.
By cutting out the opening entirely during practice sessions, Josh got a lot more “hidden reps” with the end game than his competitors, which led to a big competitive advantage.
This might seem obvious, but in my experience, it’s really quite counterintuitive not to start at the beginning when practicing a skill.
For example, when learning a new guitar piece, it feels strange not to start at the beginning but to pick out a difficult part and practice that over and over again. It’s not impossible, and many teachers will tell you to isolate difficult parts, but my (and many other students’) first instinct would always be to start at the top, over and over again.
Which begs the question:
Where else are we “starting from the top” over and over again, instead of finding and isolating the neglected skills?
Some examples of how I’m trying to integrate this principle into my life:
Neglected skills are everywhere. No matter what you’re trying to learn or achieve, creating the circumstances where you can identify and isolate them, then put in the hidden reps, will pay big dividends.
When you write every day, you believe you can write every day.
When you don’t write every day, you believe you can’t every day.
And so it goes for running, working out, eating healthy, playing the guitar, or anything else you’re frustrated or satisfied with.
Beliefs follow actions.
Actions confirm beliefs.
So follow your actions to uncover your beliefs.
Then change your actions to change your beliefs.
First, you write. Then you become a writer.
First, you run. Then you become a runner.
First, you set boundaries. Then you become good at setting boundaries.
But before all that comes the decision to write. To run. To set boundaries.
Because you’re dissatisfied with the past and say never again.
Because you’re filled with excitement about a future vision.
Because you know you’re ready to make the change.
You’ll know when it’s time, my friend.
When you decide if you should be chasing this goal, job, relationship, or place to live – in other words, commitment – you choose between action or inaction based on if it’s a viable, worthwhile, realistic goal.
When you decide on the course of action – in other words, how to do something – you’re already committed to action.
Sometimes, the commitment might be too big, too hard, or too disruptive – and that’s perfectly valid.
But here’s what I’ve noticed, my friend: whenever I try to decide on the how before I’ve decided on the commitment, I have even more doubts, and any course of action seems complicated.
I’m curious how you feel about it. We’ll talk more about it in the coming days and weeks.
You kind of want to run a marathon.
You kind of want to eat better.
You kind of want to move more.
You kind of want to feel better.
And everything kind of stays the same.
Only when “kind of” becomes “absolutely” and “want to” becomes “choose to” change happens.
I absolutely choose to write.
I absolutely choose to run a marathon.
I absolutely choose to eat better.
I absolutely choose to move more.
I absolutely choose to do whatever it takes to feel better.
Because there is no other way.
