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    #86 Practice daily, measure progress on average

    The article I publish today may be worse than one I wrote 2 months ago.

    I may struggle today with a guitar piece I played effortlessly last week.

    And when I meditate today, my mind may be all over the place, even though last week it was calm as water.

    On any given day, I may feel that I’m making progress, that I’ve reached a plateau, or even that I’m going backwards.

    But it doesn’t matter.

    Progress isn’t always visible in daily practice. But without daily practice, there is no progress.

    If I stick to daily practice, on average, I’ll get better. I’ll start having more good days than bad. And slowly but surely, my ‘bad days’ will start being better than what I consider a ‘good day’ right now.

    Progress, averaged out is what it’s all about.

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    #126 Invisible ink tattooed on your mind

    Every promise to yourself is a contract in invisible ink.

    Jo Franco on the Not Your Average Jo podcast. I recommend you listen to this episode

    But it’s not because it’s hidden from view that it doesn’t carry any weight.

    Every broken contract with yourself goes on the pile of self-distrust.

    So don’t overextend. Don’t make promises to yourself that you can’t keep anyway.

    Start with a tiny contract with yourself. Then stick to the terms.

    Build trust every day through Tiny Trust Builders.

    Remember that the contract is made, so now is not the time to negotiate.

    Retrace the letters of that invisible contract every single day.

    Then, one day, the invisible ink is tattooed on your mind, and you’ve forged an unbreakable bond between your words and actions.

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    #74 How to Go From Quitter to Go-Getter

    Becoming disciplined is simple: persevere more often than you quit.

    You don’t always have to persevere. That’s an impossibly high standard.

    Just stick to your habits and projects more often than you quit.

    Then let cognitive dissonance do its work: your beliefs will start shifting to align with your actions.

    You’re a go-getter now.

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    #178 You don’t have to master this today

    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.

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    #97 Not loneliness. Solitude.

    All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone

    Blaise Pascal, https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/19682-all-of-humanity-s-problems-stem-from-man-s-inability-to-sit

    We often equate sitting quietly in a room alone with loneliness: a word with a negative emotional charge.

    But sitting quietly in a room can also bring solitude: the simple state of being by yourself, without any negative connotation.

    Solitude can give relief of the pressure to be constantly “socializing” (through social media apps or in real life).

    Relief of the pressure to socialize can make space.

    Space you can use to hear the thoughts in your head and the feelings in your body.

    Thoughts and feelings that can tell you what’s truly important to you.

    And then you realize that what’s truly important to you is nothing new.

    It’s something you already knew, before you learned not to listen.

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