Why is it, any time many of us think about doing something new or different, a group of negative voices appear? These voices are powerful and will stop any progress. Once past these, the next step is to begin. Again, negativity ensues, this time real voices from friends, colleagues, family and so on. Over the years though I have learned the formula. That is, people laugh to begin with, are interested when you are making progress then will ask “how” once you’ve made a success of that particular thing. Then something amazing happens, You can explain how but then people say “oh well its easy for you because you are X,Y or Z”. Fill the blank with “natural”, “lucky” and then they become defensive saying “I couldn’t do that, I don’t have X”. So the formula is (personal negativity + external negativity) – consistent hard work = success + envy + excuses
This isn’t a post to get you to do more, squeezing every second out of your day. This is a message for those people out there who want to learn a language, change career, have been laid off and are afraid of contacting their friends and acquaintances, start a business or side hustle, apply for that seemingly risky job internally, move overseas and leave their friends behind, start a blog (!), anything! You will not be good at first, you will experience negativity but a lot of that can be completely ignored by having a clear numeric goal to just work towards every day. For example:
- Learn a language – have a list of say 500 words and attack them every morning on your commute with a strong coffee
- Running – go slower to avoid injury and so you actually enjoy it, look forward to it. The goal instead is to enjoy a gentle pace as you run your commute or part of your commute home
- Diet – rule, cut out carbs altogether except a cheat day so you have something to look forward to and don’t become a social leper
- Personal finance – keep it simple with one, two or three index funds following Jack Bogle’s rules for long term wealth accumulation
- Buy a book a month, maybe you finish within that month and maybe you don’t!
I have also found that it’s easy to get overwhelmed with all the things I want to do. For example, it’s not possible to attack all the above things at once, language, fitness, work success, personal finance etc all at the same time. But if you focus on one or two at the same time, you can get good enough at each. Really anything can be broken down in this way. So please, if you are thinking of doing anything new or different don’t worry about 1) what others will say 2) what will happen in the future. Do it, it will be worth it! Remember, those exact people who laugh to begin with, will be the exact people who will ultimately be the ones giving excuses as to why they didn’t do it themselves. Just think about how you will feel when they say that and use that emotion to fuel you to begin!
