Find people who do what you want to do. Also, speak to people who have a similar philosophy. Find clubs, groups, associations, etc. that do the type of thing you do. Learn from these people. Do business with them too. Reach out and meet others. Make connections. Watch your life blossom and flourish.
You’ll find a way to mess it up. You don’t have to mess it up, but that does seem to be what many people do.
With ease comes complacency. Then you can fall behind the pack. After that it seems easier to play it cool then to try hard to catch back up. Then the seeds of self-destruction are being sown. You shrug it off and say you don’t care, when inside it is eating at you every minute. Envy, jealousy and hate become commonplace in your mind.
To turn that around you need gratitude. Appreciate all the little and large things in your life. Write it out. Don’t just think about it. Write out, ‘I am grateful for….’ It could be ‘I am grateful for my health, heat in my home, food on my table and a comfortable place to sleep.’
If life is too easy, we don’t appreciate it. There was no struggle. We want to prove we had to struggle so we create some drama. There is no need to do that. There is enough you are already struggling with unless you have the body, finances, relationship, education and career you always wanted. If not, get committed and be disciplined every day until those things are 100% how you want them. Until then, be grateful for every moment of being alive and being able to work toward your dreams.
Sometimes we don’t have all the resources we would like or that others may have. For teams, sometimes a key player is injured or unavailable.
This hit home Monday when I spent the day watching my son Ryker playing with his school rugby team at a major festival. There was a comment made that they didn’t have all their players. The idea seemed to be that they may have done better with more players as there would be fewer tired players, injuries could be rested a bit more and some would have relished the higher level they played at.
I thought that could be true. Their chances of overall success may have been improved. But then I remembered another key player from another team who was still on the injured list since we played them a few weeks ago. What if all the other teams had all their players or more players or their better players?
Life can be quite random. Sometimes it works in your favour and other times it does not. So, play with what you have and do your absolute best with that.
When trying to get somewhere, it’s ideal to take the best route. But we don’t always know the best route until we’ve started and sometimes not until we’ve finished.
The most important part is to get started. Once you are thinking about your journey and writing down options, you will be more likely to discover the best route.
Don’t just age. Progress. Improve. Learn. Apply. Achieve. Start now. Think. Act. The time will pass anyway. May as well get producing in the meantime. Don’t just age. Age with progress.
It feels easier in the moment not to be disciplined. You can shrug it off. Believe that you will do it later. You think you’ll get back on it again later in the week.
After a few weeks of great daily self-discipline will be the opposite. It’s harder in every moment. Though it gets easier with practice. But it is definitely harder to start. But the longer term benefits are great. If for no other reason than you can count on yourself to achieve when you say you will.
Usually though, we find other things in our way and don’t get back to it. A few weeks of that and we won’t feel so good about ourselves. It’s self-inflicted though.
If you find it hard to count on you, who else can? But you have the control to change it all around. Only say things you are actually going to do. Don’t over-commit. Set timers to help keep you on track. Be pleased with each commitment you stick to. Those are powerful building blocks.
Self-discipline is key. And that key will unlock all the doors you can imagine.
Are you on auto-pilot too often? I know it’s easier. But sometimes we need to re-evaluate how we think and how we are coming to the conclusions we do. Is it simply that we listen to our favourite news source or podcast? Do you just nod and agree?
Do you investigate the ideas of people who hold our might have different and even opposing views?
Are you giving these things thought or simply accepting a third party view? Try understanding what others are saying. You may agree more often than you think.
Before taking action, ask yourself this question. What am I contributing to? If everything goes well, what would it look like? However, if things go wrong, how could that end up? Do you need to take this action or is it simply a desire?
I will guess that we have all had moments, that in hindsight looked like we made a less beneficial decision. We can’t undo those but we can try to minimise them going forward.
Grabbing a pitchfork to join the mob is rarely a good idea. Not being able to admit that you were wrong on something, or that you misunderstood the detail, shows a lack of moral intelligence and possibly cowardice. It’s ok to admit you spoke too soon or didn’t wait to get accurate details, but even better is to have the patience to find out the relevant details first next time.
What am I contributing to? We don’t always know in advance but when we do begin to see the adverse effects of our actions or words, we should straighten things out very quickly.
Think about this calmly without any bias and preconceptions. A couple of the words in the subject line may have already sent you in one direction or another. That is down to your mindset. The words did not involve your gender, sex, skin color, political affiliation or level of credentialed education.
Your current mindset, with its lens for every single possible topic, will determine which group you will self-categorise with. For example, someone with a slightly conservative philosophy will really challenge some people’s thought process, particularly if they also happen to have black skin, prefer same sex relationships, or both.
Everything I’ve written will be run through your mindset and you will decide whether you agree or disagree and if you like the points or not. I could know nothing about your background or affiliations, but your response to the above ideas will tell me a lot about how you think. Can you see things for what they are, or do you look through a particular lens first? That lens highlights or magnifies the bias in your mindset.
To be a good critical thinker we need to discover our own biases and minimise or eliminate them. If you look and listen carefully, you may find that people aren’t so bothered by the things you think they are but rather by different mindsets. And mindsets are the most divisive.
