Your nuts burn. Your eyes bleed. Your back aches and head spins out of fear. Your brain melts under stress and pours out of your ears. Your heart pounds like a gorilla. And you don’t even know why.
We have a hustle crisis where everyone is running full speed. We don’t know what we want. We don’t care about what we have. We want more. More money to spend, more things to flex, and more people to impress. What do we desire when we attain the invisible “more”? More.
I get it. Human nature is to push further. What’s the point of wasting precious time laying around like a sloth?
You should have goals to pursue. You should work hard. But have you stopped to ask why? What’s the cost? What are you sacrificing in an endless race to reach the top? What if you conquer the mountain only to realize you’ve left the fun part behind?
You don’t have to overwork yourself to death to justify your existence. The alternative strategy is to be calm, precise, and consistent. You can enjoy the ride and take care of yourself while pursuing what matters.
I’ll share a few interesting ideas below. You can adjust your strategy and achieve your goals without sacrificing health.
Stone Cold Monkey
We shove loads of information into our heads on daily basis. Our thoughts are scattered. Our mind leaps from one idea to another like a monkey. It feels overwhelmed and suffocated. We treat it like a storage device instead of a dots connecting beast.
Research has proven that our minds are better at processing information. They aren’t great at retaining the data. Thus, the need to dump our thoughts has never been greater.
Talk to someone. Write down your thoughts. Press the record and let it pour out. Anything you can do to calm the monkey down.
When you throw everything on the table, you can make more sense of what to keep and where. When you have clarity, you can make better decisions, reduce trial and error and minimize regrets.
Don’t Catch the Apple
On birth, we’re handed a basket with a limited number of apples. We start handing them out. We give them away for happiness, out of need, and in hopes of reward. A major chunk goes down the gutter by ourselves. Others may get stolen by thieves in disguise of friends, family, and colleagues. Until we’re left with nothing.
That’s the basket of life with a limited number of minutes. They seem meaningless in singularity but they add up to create your life.
How many times we’re drawn into situations we didn’t create? How often do we say “yes” to requests we regret later on? How often do we let other people walk all over us?
You don’t have to catch each apple thrown your way because it’ll take away many of yours. You have limited apples to trade. So trade them with caution. Protect them with care or the world will drain your basket before you know it.
Peel the Balls Open
When you’re busy talking about yourself, you’re only regurgitating what you already know. If your actions are the outcome of static information, you’ll forever be behind.
To understand where the world is heading and take advantage of trends, keep your eyes open and mouth shut. Watch and observe. Listen and understand.
Impatient patience
What the heck does that even mean?
Our attention spans are smaller than bees. We can’t read longer than a few minutes. We swipe to the next video within seconds. We close the tab if the page takes a couple of seconds longer. We’re an impatient generation.
That’s a curse if you’re trying to create something meaningful. Mastery takes thousands of hours. Quality takes hundreds of experiments and iterations. How will you survive without patience?
What I suggest is to be patient with your long-term goals but impatient with daily actions. Ask yourself what you can do today to make the biggest leap towards your goal. Write 5,000 words? Meet someone in person? Send 100 cold emails? Then do that without reluctance and procrastination.
Prune Peace Destroyers
Imagine a person making $3 billion per month. What’s the fastest way to make them unhappy with their income? Make them meet the person who makes $50 billion per month. Boom!
Our peace often depends on how well we’re doing compared to everyone else. This is a flawed approach. You can never be happy because someone will always have more.
The best way to be at peace with yourself is by competing with your previous records. Compete with your version from yesterday. Beat him. Then do it again tomorrow and the day after. Chase the hero you can be. Defeat the hero you were in the past.
If you haven’t already, listen to Matthew McConaughey’s hero speech and you’ll understand the meaning better.
Conclusion
Calm down. It’ll be alright if you take a breath. Take a moment to soak the beauty around you. Enjoy the life you’ve built. Let your mind slow down and calculate future moves more precisely. To conclude my message:
Journal to dump your thoughts and have clarity
Don’t say “yes” to every request coming your way
Watch and listen. Observe and understand.
Patience for long term goals but impatience with daily actions
Stop comparing yourself with others. Compete with your past self.
Have a wonderful day :)