Month: June 2014

“I write to discover what I know.”
—Flannery O’Connor

I remember when I first started investing in my personal growth and development aggressively.

I started by reading Tim Ferriss’s book and discussing its principles with friends. I was living in Atlanta at the time, desperately wanting to live a life of freedom and purpose (devoid of IBM Thinkpads and expense reports).

I recall very vividly how impassioned my speech would get when talking about freedom and success with friends, and how I “heard” myself producing paragraph after paragraph of eloquent insights into the nature of success.

Sure, they were my thoughts, but there was a certain level of insight into my subconscious that wasn’t available to me at other times.

I noticed the same phenomenon when I started journaling regularly. When I put pen to paper and let the words flow, I would frequently reflect on my own writing with wonder, as if the words had been penned by a more insightful and self-aware version of myself.

The best explanation I have for this is…the brain is weird.

And while it would be awesome not to have to “hack” self-reflection, it’s not worth spending even a moment wishing things were different. We can simply pretend we’re advising someone else on the steps required to achieve success if we want to become better self-counselors.

Lauryn Hill said it best.

But what comes to mind when I hear that phrase is something I’ve learned from life and my mentors over the past few years: everything is a metaphor for everything else.

Put another way, there is a clarity that comes from slaying dragons that demonstrates what’s required in order to repeat that process in other situations. Subsequent battles become easier, and you learn what’s needed to ensure victory.

You also learn how to better pick your battles (and weapons). [See? Metaphors abound (smile). ]

The next step is figuring out how to go faster, and how to leverage force multipliers to your advantage. To the uninitiated, it will look like magic. To those in the know, it will look like growth and evolution.

That might not actually be true.

Sometimes we conflate our inability to accomplish a monumental task…with our inability to care enough to see it through. Maybe you just need to get fired up.

“He who has a why to live can bear almost any how.”

-Friedrich Nietzsche

Meaning matters.

Find it.

I’m currently on a weight training routine that involves lifting five to six days a week. In addition to the encouragement that comes from knowing that I’ll be ready for my long-awaited mermaid photo shoot by the time winter rolls around, a notable consequence of this routine is fatigue.

One hallmark of effective workout regimens is that they prevent the muscles from adapting to the workouts. This translates to frequent changes in workout duration, intensity, and the very exercises employed.

But being sore sucks.

Yes, it’s a great feeling to know that I’m making progress (I think) but sometimes I want to take a few extra rest days for recovery. This is of course a luxury I don’t have, and this rest would undermine what I’m trying to accomplish.

By the same token with personal development and professional growth, remaining in a holding pattern is tantamount to suicide.

In a great podcast with Dave Asprey, Tom Corley (author of Rich Habits) explains that rich and successful people devote hours of their day to personal improvement—from physical activity to networking to content creation for books, trade journals, and publications.

Another “rich habit” is waking up about three hours before going into the office. What this says to me is that these people aren’t generally getting 8-10 hours of sleep per night.

They’re tired. They get sick. Their kids need attention. Their employees create problems that need to be solved.

But the solution employed isn’t to take a vacation or sleep in, the only option is to keep going.

Do you want the kind of friends who say what you want to hear, or friends who say the things that you need to hear?

Is your career optimized for maximum safety and stability, or do you proactively seek out responsibility and opportunities to create meaningful art?

Do you show up to play your heart out every day, grateful that you’re in the game rather than watching from the sidelines (regardless of the score when the whistle blows)?

And are you internalizing a limiting narrative about the heights you can reach in your lifetime and how likely you are to reach your goals?

I don’t want to know your answers, but you should have them.