The Greatest Lie Ever Told
The greatest lie ever told is, “This is just who I am.”
We’re conditioned to go with the flow, never considering if there’s something we could do better. Most of us live on autopilot, believing that this is all life has to offer, but the lucky few who wake up and reject the idea that “is this all there is” are the ones who achieve their dreams.
There’s one problem, it’s easy to see the finish line, but finding the starting point can seem impossible.
Let me guide you. It begins with habits and systems.
Without strong habits, you’ll never reach your full potential. You can admire your heroes, you can see their results, but rarely do you consider what brought them there.
These two habits changed my life, and they’ll change yours too.
- Avoid comparison at all costs.
- Pay attention to what you can control.
Journaling Questions For The Week
- Who is my hero?
- What do they have that I want?
- How did they get there?
Ignore Comparison At All Cost
Theodore Roosevelt famously said, ”Comparison is the thief of joy.”
My version—comparison is the opposite of progress.
Who are your heroes? For me…
- James Clear
- Mark Manson
- Ryan Holiday
Clear’s book, Atomic Habits, has sold over 20 million copies.
Mark Manson turned a blog post into his book, The Subtle Art of Not Giving A Fck, into one of the most successful self-help books of all time.
Ryan Holiday has written more books on philosophy than almost anyone else in the modern age, and his newsletter gets millions of clicks every week.
It’s easy for me to look at my heroes and say “If only I could do that,” but that pattern of thinking is admitting defeat, because, we know that we will more than likely never replicate their results.
One day it clicked… All of our heroes started from 0.
We might know that but we don’t know how to work around it. It’s likely that you never heard of your heroes until they “made it,” whatever that means. You’d never heard of Jeff Bezos before Amazon forever changed how we shop, you didn’t know who Steve Jobs was until an Apple computer sat in almost every home in America, and you didn’t know of J.K. Rowling until Harry Potter was one of the best selling fantasy franchises in history.
Imagine if all of the efforts we spent telling ourselves we’ll never achieve their results were redirected towards something within our control?
We can’t change the outcome, but we have the power to control the steps we take to get there.
Accept That You Control (Almost) Nothing
One quote has pushed me for years.
“What is the magical outcome, and how do we work backward from that?” – James Clear
A stagnant mind focuses on that never-ending list of uncontrollable forces, such as outcomes, but a growing mind focuses on the few things within its control.
Our level of control stops at our fingertips. We control only our attitude, our actions, and our thoughts.
As a writer and business owner, I cannot control if someone reads my work or the number of people who walk through the door of my shop each day. The only thing I can do is show up every day ready to give my 100% effort.
So, if comparison is our enemy, what is the alternative?
All of our heroes have one thing in common. All of them have built systems that optimize their environment and maximize their output.
If we’re going to compare ourselves to our heroes, pay attention to their system and stop trying to replicate their results.
James Clear follows the same writing system every day. He grabs a glass of water on the way to his office, sits down at his desk facing a wall with no windows, puts on his headphones, hits play on the same playlist every time, and dedicates two solid hours to writing. This happens day after day, and he releases something that changes the world of his readers, again and again.
Study your heroes, find their system, deconstruct it, and rebuild it slowly until you have something that generates your best work each day. It’s all a giant experiment.
Side note, the simpler the system, the easier it is to follow.
My system for writing is as simple as it can be.
- I don’t start by writing, I start by consuming. I read every morning. Books, tweets, newsletters, meditations, anything to get my creative juices flowing.
- I move to my desk, turn on Apple Music, open my writing app, and start letting words fall onto the page, armed with my keyboard, coffee, and a cat that does her best to steal my attention.
- After all the chaos is on the page, I start looking for a way to turn that chaos into order.
Then, at the end of each day, I sit down with my journal and ask myself two questions.
“What did I do right?
“What can I do better?”
A Bit Of Encouragement
If you want to stay where you are, feeling like you’ve never done enough, keep comparing yourself to others.
If you want to achieve your dreams, build a system that allows you to take another small step each day.
Autopilot is the default option for life, it’s easy mode. Most have a dream, but they will never take the steps to get there. They’ll never seek out the answers, never try to improve, and stay“set in their ways” until one day it’s too late.
The good news is that 2 simple habits can flip the switch, but to do that, we have to be willing to play life on hard mode.
With a little bit of focus, we never have to live by the status quo again.
“A reality-growth mindset is the ability to accept the hard limits of the way things are (like the physical laws of the universe) and also believe that anything is possible.” – Ash Ali and Hasan Kubba
Books On This Topic
- Atomic Habits – James Clear
- The Art Of Focus – Dan Koe
- Do The Hard Things First – Scott Alan
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