Choosing perfection over consistency, you’ll turn dreams into paralysis. And paralysis leads to failure.
Choosing consistency over perfection, you’ll turn dreams into small actions. And consistent small actions lead to the realization of dreams.
Elon Musk has the rock-solid belief that someday, he’s going to put people on Mars. He doesn’t hope for it. He believes it’s inevitable.
Whether his belief becomes a reality or not is irrelevant. What matters are the actions and grit his faith inspires in him and everyone working with him.
That’s the rock-solid determination extraordinary feats are built on.
But you don’t have to dream of interplanetary travel to reach stellar levels of determination.
What would you do if writing a new book isn’t just optional or desirable but inevitable?
What would you do if mastering an instrument isn’t just possible but inescapable?
What happens when, in your mind, you turn a dream into a certainty?
How does that change your actions? Mindset? Beliefs? Feelings?
How much easier does it become to persevere?
It’s possible to be disciplined to a fault, destroying yourself in the process of doing great things.
But it’s more common to be scared to a fault, preventing you from doing great things in the first place.
The first hour after I was born, 60 minutes encapsulated my entire life outside the womb.
An hour is an eternity.
When I celebrated my first trip around the sun, one year encapsulated my entire life outside the womb.
An hour is not that long anymore. But a year… that’s an eternity.
When I’ll celebrate my 30th birthday next year, one year encapsulates about 1/30th of my experience in this body here on earth.
A year is not that long anymore. But 30 years… that’s an eternity.
Lukas Van Vyve
There’s an absolute, immutable version of time, and then there’s our felt interpretation, which speeds up with every passing moment because we compare it to all the “time we’ve lived so far”.
Maybe that’s why the older we get, the more effort it takes to stay in the present moment?
Because, unlike a newborn child, for whom, compared to its short lifespan, an hour is an eternity, and every second is an opportunity to discover, drink in the world, explore…
We’ve lived so many hours, minutes, and seconds that we don’t care anymore.
with every passing year
Lukas Van Vyve
i’m more in a hurry
and the days, minutes, seconds
become ever more blurry
i can live fast and miss out
or slow down
listen, look around
be here, right now
let the world whisper loud
what life is all about
and at last
i hear you again.
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?
A memory is what we decide to remember from an experience – and what we decide to delete and forget.
Intuition is the instant hunch we get after we’ve repeatedly created memories from experiences; the moment we don’t need the conscious memory anymore.
A small (or unrepresentative) sample size leads to inaccurate intuition.
If I’m betrayed three times in my life and have created strong memories around that, my intuition whenever meeting anyone else may be that they’ll betray me too. Three bad experiences have shaped, and skewed, my relationship to billions of others.
How to develop accurate intuition?
The more memories we create, the bigger the “sample size” for our intuition to emerge from, and the smaller the weight of “outlier events” (like being betrayed).
The more deliberately we create these memories, the more deliberately we hone intuition.
Create more memories. And create them deliberately.
Finding the right path for you often means first taking the wrong turns.
Just like learning what works usually means first learning what doesn’t work.
Because gaining experience is learning to discern and distinguish between what works and what doesn’t.
And the best way to learn to discern right and wrong is by doing things right and wrong.
There’s wisdom in wrong turns.
