why you wont be successful:
On the danger of being “halfway there”
I’ve been meaning to say a couple of critical things.
Not because I like being critical, well, I do, but, people often write about what they most need to hear.
Or at least I do.
So…
Dear Mitch,
Stop lying to yourself.
You watch people lie to themselves all around you and can see the clear damage. The self-inflicted damage.
Why are you still doing it to yourself? Do you really want it?
You know people that have heart issues but eat like they’re immortal. You know people who want to make mobile apps but don’t take the time to teach themselves how to code.
But you lie too.
Browsing Facebook in the library is not studying. It’s browsing Facebook. Eating just a bite of pizza does not mean you’re keeping to your slow-carb pledge. It means you’re deviating from your goals. Reading other people’s blogs does not make you a blogger. It makes you a reader.
Thinking about startup ideas doesn’t make you a startup founder.
And sometimes you lie to yourself because you want to be those things. Or you’re “halfway there” and you love the idea so much you go ahead and say that you made it.
Ma, you say, we made it.
But here’s the thing: the easy part is getting “halfway there”. Taking the first step. Anyone can do that. The hard part is doing something with ruthless consistency. The hard part is realizing you’re far from halfway there. The hard part is not putting off decisions for next week. The longer you put something off, the expected timeframe of you getting said thing done increases exponentially.
We are not a generation of multitaskers, we’re a generation that knows how to get distracted. And until we realize that instant gratification is nothing but bullshit, pardon my français, we won’t be successful. We’ll just be halfway there.
Mitch, you’re only “halfway there.”
“The lies we tell other people are nothing to the lies we tell ourselves.”
― Derek Landy,“The visionary lies to himself, the liar only to others.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche
I know, I know: It’s not like you’re guilty of all of these things, all the time. But because of the danger of self deception, it needed to be said.
Self deception is simply choosing to psychologically please yourself in the short term instead of the long term happiness you get from when you actually complete your goals. It’s like a night of drinking: you’re borrowing happiness from tomorrow.
So, for your own good, Mitch, stop lying to yourself.
Yours truly,
