You don’t have to become a writer. But you could. Even if you don’t believe it yet.
And if knowing that you could makes you restless…
If the fact that it’s possible makes the hairs on the back of your neck stand up…
If a persistent “What if” keeps echoing through your mind…
Then maybe you should become a writer.
Similarly, you don’t have to be passionate about anything. But you could.
And if you could… what would you be passionate about?
You know I like word games, my friend.
Let’s play with mistakes today.
I don’t like that word—such a negative emotional charge.
And what’s the opposite of a mistake, anyway?
We have a word for doing things wrong, but not for doing things right?
Could we call mistakes lessons?
Bleh, so bland. Heard that a million times before.
What about misguided actions?
Better. Actions that guide me away from my intended outcome. And after a misguided action, I adjust my strategy. I course-correct. Until I get it right and take… guided action?
We’re not there yet. But guided and misguided actions… I don’t know about you, my friend, but to me, that’s going in the right direction.
A bit like traction and distraction.
But that’s a word game for another day.
In the series of self-sabotaging behavior I’ve observed in myself and others: “pre-emptively disqualifying yourself”.
Before you even start, you’re depriving yourself already of any potential benefit of the exercise because you don’t know if you’ll get the EXACT benefit promised/desired by you.
“This exercise might have cured your neck pain, but I’ve always had neck problems, it won’t chage anything.”
“You might be able to write every day, but for me, in my situation, that would never be possible.”
This shows a lack of understanding of learning principles. Because with any exercise, program, diet, methodology, you’ll never get the exact same results as someone else, because you can never replicate the exact circumstances and actions of a person.
Instead, you do the exercise/program/diet/… within the framework of your own personal context/skills/past experience. Within that context, it will guide your learning process. But the outcome resulting from it is personal.
Variance is to be expected, and this is a good thing. Because this is how innovation happens: actions in different types of circumstances lead to slightly different results. Sometime that leads to disappointment, sometimes to real breakthroughs.
Getting different results, then, is not a reason to pre-emptively disqualify yourself, or to claim something doesn’t work. Because the true value doesn’t lie in getting the exact same results as someone else, but rather, to consciously set the general direction of our lives.
Every day, we have to make so many decisions that lead us down different future paths, so modeling someone and using their actions as a guiding principle will greatly increase the probability of you going in the direction you desire, and getting results in the same ballpark.
For example, I’ve been doing Dylan Werner’s yoga classes on Alo Moves (my go-to online yoga/fitness/meditation app) consistently for almost two years now. Even if I continue to follow his exact schedule for two more years, chances are, I still might not be able to do something like this:
After all, we have a different body structure, different gene disposition, different circumstances, and I’ll have to adapt his schedule to my personal capacity.
Still, if I follow his schedule I’ll definitely become much stronger and healthier than if I chose to model a couch potato, watch TV and eat fries and burgers all day. And that’s what it’s all about.
Modeling, in that point of view, are an effective way to accelerate your progress and lead your life in the direction you want, without you having to know exactly which results you’ll get.
In other words: when you let go of the need to predict exact future outcomes, you can stop pre-emptively disqualifying yourself, and start pro-actively setting the direction of your life.
“You already know what I’m going to say,” the mentor I don’t have tells me.
It’s true.
I don’t need anyone to tell me what to do.
Neither do you.
All you need is someone to remind you to do what you already know.
If you had constant presence of mind, you could remind yourself.
But if you’re anything like me, your clarity gets lost in day-to-day desires, worries, and chores.
And that’s fine.
Because that’s what you’re here for, no?
Not to learn what your life should look like but to receive a reminder to live it daily?
If I want to act differently, I let go of the past.
If I want to act the same way I always did, I cling to the past.
Both clinging and letting go have their place.
I could cling to a habit of eating healthily, or treating others with kindness.
But maybe I could let go of a habit of self-criticism.
What benefits me? What benefits others?
What harms me? What harms others?
Who do I want to be?
Yesterday could’ve been the day the talking stopped
And the doing started.
So could be today.
What’s stopping you?
Before I write, I barely know what I want to write.
The more I write, the more I know what I’m meant to write.
Intention can be there before the practice. But meaning only shows up when YOU show up.
