You will eat a shit sandwich or what I learned this year
We live in the world where you can have as many mentors as you want. The abundance of books, podcasts, blogs, videos allows us to learn from people on the other side of the globe. Choose as many as you like. They don’t even have to be aware of your existence, in fact, 99.9% of my mentors do not know I exist.
This blog post is an attempt to reflect on the lessons I learned with the help of these great teachers and a healthy dose of introspection.
Your mind is not you
This one might sound counter-intuitive, but it helped me a lot. We tend to think that our ideas are a part of us. The fact is, that you can be an observer of your mind and you can think of it as a factory that spits out ideas.
How is this helpful?
By observing your mind, you can start to control your thoughts. You can start to choose the way you react to those thoughts.
For example, do you consider “I want to grab a burger this morning” as part of you or do you consider that involuntary thought that seeks the fastest way to get rid of the hunger?
The credit for this goes to mind hacking book.
You do not control your life if you have no time
This one is really important. We tend to get busy with our chores and tasks at work or at home. I have been in “busy, busy, busy” attitude for a great deal of my working life. That usually happens when we are hiding from our true calling and want to forget ourselves in “busy” life.
Ask yourself these questions — “Am I saying 'yes' to too many things?”, “Is my life filled with problems that I hide from in 'busy' attitude?”, “Am I happy living this lifestyle?”
I say no to most things that are coming my way in order to focus on the things that truly matter and to have the ability to seize the right opportunity.
I choose not to hide in “work, work, busy, busy” attitude. How about you?
Credit for this goes to interview with Derek Sivers in Tim Ferriss show
You will eat a shit sandwich
When you want something, all the universe conspires by throwing shit in your face.
If you want to start a business, be prepared to work in evenings and during the weekends.
If you want to get in shape, you will need to stop eating shit you were eating before and start taking your lazy ass for a run.
If you are married, you will suffer. You will need to learn to coup with all the problems that marital life brings to the table.
The biggest question you can ask yourself is not — “What I really want?”. It is — “Am I willing to suffer in order to get what I want?”
You will need to coup with the fact that you will need to suffer in order to achieve something. It will not be all red roses and butterflies as in some Disney movie.
You will get pissed off and you will piss off other people. You will cry and you will be on the edge of depression. Get your shit together and start suffering for your own good.
This blog post by Mark Manson helped me to define this
“I can do it mentality” can be dangerous
If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
I am a software developer and often every problem seems to me like a coding problem. Of course, sometimes it is true, but it does not allow me to look outside the box and to look for alternatives that are more cost-effective and faster to implement.
I learned this the hard way when I and my friend wanted to start the e-commerce business and I decided to code the solution on my own. I spent roughly 80 hours doing the coding part while I could pay 50$ a month for Shopify or similar solution that had everything I needed.
By the way, I ended up spending more than 50$ per month that that, just because of the hosting, SSL and other niceties of having smoothly running website.
There is, of course, another factor. I am in a comfort zone when I am coding. I much rather write a line of code, than Facebook post to attract potential customers.
Don't think that whole world can be improved by your skill set. Someone might have already done 90% of work for you. You might only need to execute the idea and get out of the comfort zone with skills you don't have.
This thing was learned the hard way by myself :)
The process of habit
Queue, Process, Reward. That is the routine of the habit.
Let's examine one of the most far-reaching habits of humanity ever — Teeth brushing.
Do you know that the tingling sensation that you have while cleaning your teeth is specially designed to be a queue of the teeth cleaning habit?
Before toothpaste had this queue it was hard for marketers to keep sales of the toothpaste up.
The process is the cleaning of the teeth and the reward is a fresh breath.
Most of the habits can be boiled down to these three steps and that helps to recognize the pattern and to incorporate it or to break the loop.
The credit for this one goes to “The power of habit”