What would you like to become good at?
Why do you want to become good at this? Passion? Purpose? Impressing others?
Are you willing to spend a lot of time to become good at this?
Are you willing to give up other things to become good at this?
Are you making life harder for yourself by trying to become good at this?
Is that worth it?
…
The question that rules them all:
How easy was it to answer the questions above?
Maybe you feel like you’re going off-track once in a while.
Maybe going off-track is how you build your own track.
Maybe your own track doesn’t always have to go straight.
Maybe you’re the only one using your track.
And maybe that’s fine.
When technology and AI outpace us and we can’t be the best, smartest, fastest, strongest on the planet anymore – will we still care about our economic output?
When results have become irrelevant, what are the things I will still want to do?
Maybe we’ll rediscover value in our actions themselves and the pleasure and pain they make us feel – happy, sad, useful, worthless, brimming with purpose, overflowing with self-hatred…?
Will I still write just because I enjoy writing, even if AI could write a better-researched, more insightful book than I ever could?
Will I still learn a language just because learning a language makes me feel good, even if I could use an instant translation device to talk to anyone in the world?
Will I still spend my days in an office cubicle if that’s a painful prospect?
An era of soul-searching is coming.
“Write 3 pages of Stream of Consciousness journaling.”
“Coming up with 100 things to be grateful about.”
“Publish a daily insight.”
My initial reaction, and maybe yours, is, “That’s so much.”
And that’s exactly the point.
It IS a lot.
But actually, it isn’t.
And when you try it out, and see that it isn’t, you’ve shattered the illusion of scarcity and discovered abundance.
Maybe we humans are wired to believe in scarcity and fighting over sparse food.
And while that may serve us well, in many endeavors, there’s much more abundance than we think.
If your gut reaction was, “That’s so much,” I invite you to try it out.
Write down what the voice in your head talks about for 3 entire pages.
Write down 100 things you’re grateful for.
Challenge the scarcity mindset.
There may well be abundance on the other side.
If only someone told you before
That no matter how loud the others shout
Nobody has it figured out
If only someone told you before
That the rules you use to govern your life
Aren’t set in stone?
If only someone told you before
That it’s totally okay
To find your own way
If only someone told you before…
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.
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.
