Discipline

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    #31 Ignore, then highlight more

    ByLukas

    A daily insight from Tony Robbins:

    Wherever focus goes, energy flows.

    Tony Robbins, https://www.tonyrobbins.com/career-business/where-focus-goes-energy-flows/

    We’re always ignoring and highlighting parts of our experience to make sense of the world – and it determines the way we feel.

    To feel bad, you (temporarily) have to ignore all the events and things you consider positive.

    To feel good, you (temporarily) have to ignore events and circumstances that can be challenging.

    It all depends on context.

    Sometimes, just to function, it’s necessary to ignore.

    Sometimes you’re better off highlighting a bit more.

    The big challenge: most of the time, we’re not aware of where our focus goes – so we let old habits and patterns decide how we feel – even if they don’t serve us at all.

    Here’s an exercise I found useful: Tomorrow, focus on something that’s important for you once an hour (a post-it on your desk or a reminder on your phone can be useful). That way, it remains top of mind (and your energy will flow toward it).

    Every hour, also take a moment to become aware of what you’re deleting from your experience, and what you’re highlighting.

    • What am I trying to do today?
    • What am I trying to do right now?
    • What’s important to me?
    • What do I want to focus on… what do I intentionally ignore?
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    #29 The myth of self-sabotage

    ByLukas

    All behavior is inspired by avoiding pain or gaining pleasure – and since you usually act on what your brain perceives as the most intense of the two.

    So if you think you desire something, but then “sabotage” yourself so you never get what you desire, that means you have mixed feelings about desire (and thus inner conflict): deep down, you feel that desire will give you more pain than pleasure.

    In other words, it’s not self-sabotage: it’s your brain protecting you from pain it perceives as stronger than the pleasure you might get from reaching your goal.

    Maybe you desire more money, but deep down, you feel money will corrupt you, or make you lose friends, make you feel guilty, or make you lose your drive.

    Maybe you have a desire to write or create, but you feel the pain of judgment or rejection is stronger than the pleasure of creating.

    Maybe you want to get in shape, but deep down, you feel you’ll give up anyway before reaching any meaningful results, so you’d rather save yourself the pain of future disappointment (a classic self-trust problem).

    Maybe you notice a certain destructive pattern in your relationships, but you believe going to therapy and “opening up that can of worms” will be even worse than perpetuating the current situation.

    If you keep sabotaging yourself, it might be worth to ask yourself the question: what pain am I avoiding? What am I afraid of? In my imagination, what’s going to happen when I reach my goal; both positive AND negative?

    Or even better than just asking: journal about it.

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    #28 Write anyway – then write some more

    ByLukas

    Think you don’t have any good ideas to write about? Write anyway. Then write some more. The ideas might well reveal themselves on the page. (Morning Pages are good for this)

    Have an idea but struggle to put it into words? Write anyway… Then write some more.

    Struggling to edit your work and get it to a level where you believe it’s “publish-worthy”? Publish it anyway. especially when it’s imperfect. Once you see nothing bad happens when there’s a typo or an awkward sentence, your self-trust grows, your editing will become less judgmental, and your creativity will soar.

    Scared of publishing your work, being judged, being seen? Publish anyway. Then publish some more. When you increase your publishing frequency, there’s less burden on that one post, video, book, piece of art.

    You can only overcome the objections your mind invents by not letting them stop you from sculpting away, day by day.

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    #26 Becoming less blind to what’s already here

    ByLukas

    I write about the same topics over and over again, with slightly different words.

    I listen to people explaining the same topics over and over again, with a slightly different interpretation.

    I practice the same breathing exercises every day, becoming aware of changes so subtle it’s hard to believe they make any difference.

    While all that energy spent on what seems like “repeating” and “reviewing” might seem like a waste of time, the constant revisiting of things we already know is how I grow.

    Because with every repetition I’m discovering a new part of the same insight.

    A new nuance that in itself might seem insignificant, but added to my personal experience, insights, understanding, might make all the difference.

    And with every new insight, I become a little less blind to what’s already here.

    In the process, I have to accept that the perfect words might never come.

    The perfect explanation might never come.

    The perfect execution of a skill might never happen.

    But if I stay the course, my understanding of what matters to me in life will always keep growing.

    At some point, through all the practicing, learning, reading, writing, I might stumble upon a groundbreaking insight.

    Or maybe it never happens.

    It doesn’t matter. I feel fulfilled regardless… As long as I keep sculpting away, day by day.

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    #25 Pre-emptive disqualification

    ByLukas

    In the series of self-sabotaging behavior I’ve observed in myself and others: “pre-emptively disqualifying yourself”.

    Before you even start, you’re depriving yourself already of any potential benefit of the exercise because you don’t know if you’ll get the EXACT benefit promised/desired by you.

    “This exercise might have cured your neck pain, but I’ve always had neck problems, it won’t chage anything.”

    “You might be able to write every day, but for me, in my situation, that would never be possible.”

    This shows a lack of understanding of learning principles. Because with any exercise, program, diet, methodology, you’ll never get the exact same results as someone else, because you can never replicate the exact circumstances and actions of a person.

    Instead, you do the exercise/program/diet/… within the framework of your own personal context/skills/past experience. Within that context, it will guide your learning process. But the outcome resulting from it is personal.

    Variance is to be expected, and this is a good thing. Because this is how innovation happens: actions in different types of circumstances lead to slightly different results. Sometime that leads to disappointment, sometimes to real breakthroughs.

    Getting different results, then, is not a reason to pre-emptively disqualify yourself, or to claim something doesn’t work. Because the true value doesn’t lie in getting the exact same results as someone else, but rather, to consciously set the general direction of our lives.

    Every day, we have to make so many decisions that lead us down different future paths, so modeling someone and using their actions as a guiding principle will greatly increase the probability of you going in the direction you desire, and getting results in the same ballpark.

    For example, I’ve been doing Dylan Werner’s yoga classes on Alo Moves (my go-to online yoga/fitness/meditation app) consistently for almost two years now. Even if I continue to follow his exact schedule for two more years, chances are, I still might not be able to do something like this:

    After all, we have a different body structure, different gene disposition, different circumstances, and I’ll have to adapt his schedule to my personal capacity.

    Still, if I follow his schedule I’ll definitely become much stronger and healthier than if I chose to model a couch potato, watch TV and eat fries and burgers all day. And that’s what it’s all about.

    Modeling, in that point of view, are an effective way to accelerate your progress and lead your life in the direction you want, without you having to know exactly which results you’ll get.

    In other words: when you let go of the need to predict exact future outcomes, you can stop pre-emptively disqualifying yourself, and start pro-actively setting the direction of your life.

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    #24 Put your actions where your mouth is

    ByLukas

    Here’s a useful insight from James Clear, author of Atomic Habits:

    Every action you take is a vote for the type of person you wish to become.

    https://jamesclear.com/3-2-1/june-4-2020

    Writing every day reaffirms my “I’m a writer” identity.

    Sitting on the couch every day reaffirms my “I’m a couch potato” identity.

    As a consequence: when you change your actions and your identity starts shifting to align with those actions.

    And that’s how we get out of a rut.

    (The opposite isn’t always true: changing your thoughts without changing your actions will rarely shift your identity. I can think of being a writer as much as I want, if I never put any words on paper, I’m not a writer. That’s one of the principle of cognitive dissonance: Actions overrule Thoughts.)

    Here’s how to change your actions and your identity:

    1. First, you decide who you want to be (and what your new identity looks like).
      “I want to be a yogi: someone who regularly practices yoga and takes care of his mind and body.”
    2. Second you get clear on what that would look like in your daily life: which actions you’ll take that are different from the ones you’re taking right now.
      “Instead of watching TV before, my “yogi identity” would do a daily yoga session.
    3. Third, you gain enough leverage over yourself to go against your current habits, and take those different action for a prolonged period of time.
      This is where most resistance comes up, because my old “couch potato identity” is fighting my “yogi” identity — and through my past actions, the couch potato has received WAY more votes than the yogi.
      So you need perseverance at this stage. Remember, every time you take those new actions, you’re voting for your new identity and new habits are taking roots.
    4. At some point, you reach a tipping point productivity experts call “habit escape velocity“: you now have so much momentum that you’re out of the sphere of influence of your old habits, and your new habits (and new identity) can take root.

    Which begs the question…

    Where are you saying you want to be a certain way, but you’re voting for something else through your daily actions?

    Lukas Van Vyve

    Put your money (or your actions) where your mouth is.

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    #22 Actions Overrule Thoughts

    ByLukas

    One of the most potent drivers of change AND perpetuators of old habits is cognitive dissonance:

    In the field of psychology, cognitive dissonance is the perception of contradictory information, and the mental toll of it. Relevant items of information include a person’s actions, feelings, ideas, beliefs, values, and things in the environment. Cognitive dissonance is typically experienced as psychological stress when persons participate in an action that goes against one or more of those things.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance

    What’s interesting about cognitive dissonance is that both “sides” of the dissonance are not equal:

    If you think one thing, but you do something else, eventually you’ll start believing what you do, not what you think.

    In other words: actions overrule thoughts.

    1. If I tell myself I can’t write a daily post (thought) and I don’t write a daily post (action), I perpetuate the belief.
    2. If I tell myself I can’t write a daily post (thought) but I gain enough courage and I actually do write a daily post (action), I will start shifting my belief towards the actions I’m taking. In other words: I’ll start believing I can write a daily post.
    3. If I tell myself I can write a daily post (thought), but I never actually write that daily post (action), then my belief will start shifting again, and I’ll start believing I can’t write a daily post.
    4. If I tell myself I can write a daily post (thought) and I do write a daily post (action), my belief grows stronger.

    We usually start in the first scenario until we gain enough leverage over ourselves to change our actions. The moment we change our actions to actions that conflict with our thoughts/beliefs, we’re creating cognitive dissonance.

    Then, if we follow through with our new actions, our beliefs start to change.

    The big turning point is that moment where you start taking a different action.

    Which begs the question:

    • How can we gain enough leverage over ourselves to go against our beliefs and change our actions for the better?
    • How can we make it so important to us to change (or so painful NOT to change) that we start taking different actions?

    Identify your leverage points that jolt you into action, and you gain power over your beliefs and identity.

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    #21 Action Defies Excuses (day 20 update)

    ByLukas

    Day 20 of my daily publishing experiment. What I’ve learned (or remembered) so far:

    • Self-trust is built by taking action. On some days I woke up stressed out, thinking “I have no clue what I’ll post about today”. But then I start writing, and the post reveals itself on the page every single time. After experiencing that several times, the fear of posting (or not being able to write anything) is fading away. In other words: action defies excuses.
    • Starting to journal (Morning Pages) over 600 days ago led to an explosion in creativity. Starting to publish a daily insight is giving me a similar boost.
    • In the past, I leaned towards bigger, longer writing projects that required a lot of energy and thinking before I produced something “valuable”. I now see there’s power in consistently writing short posts about ideas and insights, no matter how insignificant and no matter how imperfect the writing. Because through the writing, I understand them better. I remember them better. And I’m confident that over time, from all these small insights, bigger ideas will emerge.

    In short, a pattern I’ve observed many time in the past years is playing out again:

    When I start defying my own excuses by taking action, no matter how small, my self-trust grows, my self-image shifts, and I become more of the person I want to be.

    Which begs the question:

    Where else am I frustrated, holding on to a static identity of the past that I could prove wrong by taking action?

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    #19 The first time feels funny, the fiftieth time you fly

    ByLukas

    In a podcast segment about practicing Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu,Tim Ferris and Joshua Waitzkin discuss a principle for managing expectations they call:

    “The first rep doesn’t count.”

    Tim Ferris, Josh Waitzkin: https://tim.blog/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/148-josh-waitzkin.pdf

    In other words: when performing a move for the first time, your body and mind need to get used to it. Gradually,you’ll get better – and the more aware you are of your body, the faster you’ll make progress – but judging someone on their first attempt doesn’t say much about their future potential.

    This holds true for many skills in life, like starting a daily publishing habit.

    Publishing a post or a video for the first time always feels funny (and often frightening). At this stage, judgment or feedback is futile. It’s all about jumping the hurdle of getting started

    Publish five times, you’re ready to get some feedback (both from yourself and from others)…

    Publish for the fiftieth time, and you’re well on your way to turn it into a habit… and fly.

    So whenever I start something new, I manage my expectations by repeating to myself:

    The first time feels funny. The fiftieth time I fly.

    And for bonus points: What would it feel like the 500th time?

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    #18 Practicing neglected skills – Reps hidden in plain sight

    ByLukas

    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?

    Neglected skills and hidden reps examples

    Some examples of how I’m trying to integrate this principle into my life:

    1. By the end of a yoga session, my muscles are so fatigued there are certain poses and moves I just can’t execute anymore with proper technique. Over the long run, this leads to an imbalance; I get good at the poses that appear early on in the session, and neglect the ones later in the session.
      To counteract this, I sometimes do separate sessions where I isolate those “neglected moves”. Suddenly, they become much easier, and I learn to execute them with proper technique.
    2. I’ve been writing and journaling every day for almost 2 years now. Those reps have trained me to get over the bump of the empty page, open the floodgates, and generate many ideas and insights.
    3. Out of all that writing and journaling, I barely ever created anything “publish-worthy”. Now I’m writing a daily blog post, which trains me to take the ideas I’m generating anyway, and turn them into something I can publish.
    4. Instead of publishing one long post a week – or once every couple of years like some book authors – where I’d only rarely experience that feeling and fear of “putting something out there”, I decided to publish something every day, even if it’s very short. Daily short form posts give me seven times more publishing practice than one long weekly post.
      I’m 15 days in and already notice I’m developing much more trust in myself that I’m capable of publishing something every day and there’s always something to write about. Even when I decide on a different schedule in the future, I’ll have much more experience in putting content out regularly than someone with a lower-frequency schedule.

    In sum

    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.

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