#103 Show me one daily action

No one is bad at sticking to habits.

Because everyone’s day-to-day life is stitched together with recurring activities anyway, whether you consciously choose to do them or not.

Maybe you brush your teeth every day – and that has become a non-negotiable.

Maybe you wash your hands before every meal – and that has become a non-negotiable.

Maybe you shower every morning right after waking up – and that has become a non-negotiable.

Maybe you write every day – and that has become a non-negotiable.

Maybe you practice yoga three times a week – and that has become a non-negotiable.

Maybe you spend 10 minutes daily catching up with family, friends, acquaintances, or relatives you haven’t seen in a while – and that has become a non-negotiable.

Habits are habits.

And that has an interesting consequence:

If you can do that, you can also do this.

I could consider myself a writer if I write 20,000 words a day – and I would be right.

Or I could consider myself a writer if I write one sentence a day – and I would be right.

I could consider myself a writer if I’ve written a book – and I would be right.

Or I could consider myself a writer the moment I’ve decided I’m going to be a writer – and I would be right.

I could consider myself a writer if I’ve built up enough self-trust and taken enough daily actions that prove that I genuinely care about being a writer – and I would be right.

Whether you’re aware of them or not, you’re using subjective measuring sticks for everything, usually determined by upbringing, culture, and societal pressure.

But nothing stops you from consciously choosing your measuring sticks (depending on your goals, you could make them easier or more challenging) and setting yourself up for more fulfillment and success.

Here are some questions that can help:

When you say you want to be {successful, happy, fulfilled, fit, wealthy}…

How do you know you’re reaching your goal?

Is it an achievement?

A material possession?

A feeling?

An action you take?

A decision you make?

Choose wisely.

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.