If you quit on facing 1st loss or have fear, etc, write a script in pointers of what you do. Eg: I have tendency to quit on 1st loss which creates even bigger harm. This is coming from X fear and make me think of Y thing. Expose the fear and after 1 week write what actually happens and the solution. When facing same situation, read this to know how your brain will process it and this illusion will be solved faster
If you feel tired or think don’t have enough time or too much in your head and want to stop thinking about it, do something physical like dipping face in ice cold water, or any rapid change in physiology
How to Stop Losing Focus
- Prepare yourself and your environment before working.
- Plan specific tasks the night before
- Choose a time when you’re most energized
- Find the right, clean place
- Turn off distractions
- Do some breathing exercise and look over your to-do list
- Turn on calming sound in background look classical music, nature sound
- Focus work 3-4 hrs max
Combat Overthinking and self doubt
- Change the way you think about your goals. Don’t think of micro take but just 1 step. Eg: Go to the gym instead of get shoes, travel…
- Other people are interested in themselves and don’t pay attention to what you’re upto so no judgement
- Meditate
- Journal your thoughts. Reread and debunk your fears. It’s fear really with keeping, or negotiating myself out of something
- Talk out if you can’t journal
- Embrace self doubt. Ask what’s the worst case. You can plan on doing it wrong first to let go of perfection
- Write down the actual probability of it happening, physically on paper to calm yourself
Procrastinating on things?
- Acknowledge your fears and why is it stressing you out
- Establish your why you want to stop procrastinating
- Remove distractions
- Take immediate action even if tiny
A quick way to get into the zone is to play a particular song or sound for few mins before and whole doing work regularly until you associate the sound with work
The fear of being stuck, not making progress, being stagnant, etc all can be lessened once you acknowledge that no matter what step you take, you’ll have to pivot and make changes because you’ll have new perspective once you start
In male friendships, the external world is what they’re optimizing for while their internal dialogue is messed up or not expressed. So male friendships typically bond when they can share secrets about each other without being judged, saying honest things that’ll truly benefit them, and being able to have both light-hearted and serious conversations. These are also signals to know who is a good friend.
Best or close friends have a quality that they can understand the emotions behind what you say and respond appropriately
Think of the friend you share everything with. If you share something important, they give it same importance and instead of joking or making fun they genuinely try to help
That feeling of knowing my secret is safe, and I won’t be judged for what I say or do, and someone who is genuinely having my best interest at heart is a sign of a good friend. Ask yourself these questions to understand better:
- Would I consider it a compliment if someone compares me to my friend
- Are you friends just because you feel lonely or does the friendship fulfills you
- Can you show your true self in front of them
- Do you like him as he is now or his potential
- If you had a kid, then would you want the kid to be friends with a person like him?
Whenever something you feel happened is sad or have negative thoughts about life. Write every detail of the experience you’re feeling, why you are blaming yourself, and what you missed. Then write you’re not alone and feel that. This at the end reminds you to look at your problem in 3rd person. You’ll be surprised how well it works
You’ll never know all the steps to reach your goal but only the next ones that’ll lead you further.
Treat everything you do or the decisions you make as experiments. Successful people have just done more of them at a higher success rate and you only hear about the experiments that worked.
You think your experiments have huge impact and are irreversible which makes you microanalyze every move.
Once you acknowledge this, taking action becomes way easier.
If you dwell on the past, it doesn’t mean you’re overthinking, it’s an indication that you haven’t acknowledged and learned the lessons it was trying to teach you and that’s why it keeps coming back.
Write down all possible lessons you think the past may be trying to teach you. You don’t “get over” the past by ignoring it.
When taking advice, don’t see how old or young the person is.
See how many and what variety of experiences the person has.
An old person may have 10 years of same experience repeated. An young person may have more experience because he’s trying to learn.
Age is not correlated with wisdom, quality and quantity of experience is.
If you think life is tough, remember most of your decisions are reversible.
If you think life is easy, remember you are going to die someday, so work towards the best life you can have.
Successful people don’t know everything, they just have the right perspective at right time.
The level of success you’ll achieve is directly proportional to the amount of discomfort you can handle along the way.
Once you become comfortable with change, progress becomes faster and journey becomes exciting.
The reason for feeling behind in life despite doing work and learning new things is that you’re failing to make progress on the main goal in your life.
If something is bothering you, take care of it or it’ll make you feel like you’re doing nothing and you’re just running away from the main problem by focusing on doing other things.
People don’t take actions not because of fear of failure but because they don’t want to get out of having the belief that they too could have made it if they’d have done XYZ.
They wouldn’t have done XYZ because they just want a sense that they can do it but don’t to see themselves
Working for short term pleasures will not make you satisfied with your life.
Building long term assets and things will give you meaning.
If you’re confused about what to do with your time, then pick the hardest thing which will give you long term benefits and start working towards it.
You’ll feel more satisfied and less confused.
Telling from my personal experience
Whenever you learn something new, make it a habit to run an experiment for a week and see how it goes.
You don’t have to plan your entire day to make it productive.
Just know what are the important things you want to do and then focus on getting those done, then you can relax all you want.
Start with completing 1 task a day. It can be working towards your business, learning a skill, etc.
Dressing better doesn’t just convey how much you respect yourself but you also tell your mind that you are important and that’s why putting in effort to look better.
When you start valuing yourself more, you’ll take decisions that are good for you and not the ones that feel good for a short while but have negative effect in the long run
Never do things that would cause you to lose respect for yourself. It can be things like:
- Not doing what you said
- Supporting something just because you don’t want to hurt the other person’s feelings but you don’t like what they’re doing
This time will never come back. Make sure you spend it the way that’s best for you or else 6 months from now, you’ll wonder where the time went and you’d have nothing to show for it.
Journaling about your thoughts and what you did at least once a week will help you answer the question of
“What did I do in the last 6 months?”
You’ll clearly know if you took actions that you needed or were you just fooling yourself in the illusion.
Knowing if something isn’t working is way better than ignoring it and having the false belief that everything is going good.
If you do not know what to do with your life and especially if you’re young,
Use fear as a compass to guide you to what you need to do.
You know what you want to do but are afraid or have self doubt.
Instead of avoiding fears, make a list of them and progressively expose yourself to them and you’ll soon remove that filter of fear that comes whenever you think of new ideas and this will lead to more clarity.
Making a routine is not about planning every hour of your day.
But its about just planning a few hours in which you get the things done that are most important and non-negotiables for you.
Have a morning routine, evening routine, 2-3 hours of deep work on any goal of yours, minimum 1hr of learning time.
If you ensure you have the above 4 things in your life, you’ll get far ahead in life and feel satisfied at the same time.
How to know what you want?
Write down what drained you of energy, and what gave you energy after you do any kind of task.
Jealousy. Most of the times, what you’re jealous of is the thing you want, maybe not via the way the other person got it but by a different path leading to the same thing.
These 2 are indicators of what the real you want and not the superficial one who just wants to appear good in front of others
How to think better and faster
Every morning, for 5-10 minutes, write down anything from your mind as fast as you can. No breaks, just in words like your thoughts flow with fillers or random words you have.
(Turn off that spell check)
Empty your brain and you won’t feel the need to store your worries
Your thoughts dominate you because unconsciously they build up a story and stops you from taking action.
When you write down your thoughts (aka mind chatter), you’ll start seeing them objectively and question if it’s really logical.
If you’re having more than one thought currently, just open notepad and write for 2 minutes. Don’t think of finding any apps or the best way to write it but just write.
Whenever you don’t have any reason to work, give yourself one. How?
Just tell yourself a white lie.
Example: If you want to start a business but already have decent job and can’t get yourself motivated, tell yourself that I want to do this to give my parents a better life, to make my future self at 80 be proud that I started today.
Just try out this by connecting what you want with what is close to you.
Or if nothing comes to mind, imagine yourself at an age where you have fewer days left to live and have your grandkids come to you and ask you to share your story about how you were as a person, how would you want to see them and feel before leaving this word. Visualize this and see the power.