Where am I scared of getting what I want, stopping myself from seeing that I already have it?
Where am I addicted to the feeling of not having what I want, to the degree that I can’t see I already have it?
Where has a feeling of scarcity become the goal I pursue, stopping me from feeling fulfilled?
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.
Are you practicing writing? Or giving up writing?
Are you practicing persevering? Or giving up?
Are you practicing doing what you know is good for you? Or ignoring what you know is good for you?
You’re always practicing something. And what you practice, you’ll become good at. And what you practice will persist.
“It’s too late for this.”
“The world isn’t ready for that.”
Both are invalid excuses to not do the work.
You’ll always fall behind.
And you’ll always be ahead of your time.
All you can do is getting the most out of the now, while keeping in mind the past and keeping an eye on the future.
Learning a foreign language is both a frustrating and liberating experience.
We can focus on the frustration of not understanding the words the way we understand our mother tongue. Or we can realize that without the words, we are free to fall back on other ways of capturing and understanding meaning.
A crying baby can be soothed by words it does not yet understand, because she senses what’s behind the sounds, lets the meaningless melody cradle her to sleep…
Similarly, we don’t always have to know what’s behind the words, as long as we make an effort to understand the meaning behind the sounds.
Hearing a foreign language brings us back to that wordless world the way we experienced it as a newborn, before we tried so hard to put everything within and around us into language.
It makes us remember, there’s more to life than our words will ever allow us to express. And somehow, that’s a soothing thought.
I can’t do it the way I want it yet.
Which is exactly why I’m doing it.
Most people are happy to start something new and experience “quick wins” when motivation is still high.
Yet the moment they stop seeing results, motivation dwindles.
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If you can show me you can show up every day…
Even when you don’t see any progress…
Just because it’s important to you…
That’s why I know you’re truly ready to get the results you’ve always wanted.
