• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content

LIFE UNCIVILIZED

Dating And Life Advice For Men

  • ARTICLES
    • BEST ARTICLES
    • ALL ARTICLES
  • COMPLETE DATING COURSE
  • COACHING
  • E-BOOKS
  • ABOUT
    • CONTACT

Success

The Hidden Cost of Not Being a Failure

by Visko Matich · Sep 4, 2018

failure rate

IF TIGERS worked on Wall Street, they’d be kicked out the door in five minutes. Contrary to their reputation of being the deadliest cat on the planet (that honor goes to the tiny black-footed cat) it’s estimated that 95% of a Tiger’s hunts end in complete failure.

That means the odds of it successfully hunting are about 0.0526. And if you’re wondering why the hell you’re attending math class right now, let me give you some context. That’s not much better odds than the Tiger correctly guessing the ace of spades from a deck of cards.

Tigers, despite their reputation as the biggest, baddest cat on the planet, fail all the time. And considering most of their life is spent hunting, that means most of their life is spent out of breath, feeling embarrassed, and watching some shit-eating gazelle spring away.

But this isn’t just how it is for Tigers. This is how it is for all of nature.

The vast majority of animals fail all the time at exactly what they are designed to do. The tiger fails to hunt, the bear fails to scavenge, and the blue whale fails to… well, it fails to do whatever it is that blue whales do.

Failing is part of life. If we want to do what we’re best at, then we better get used to failing.

You’ve probably heard the quote ‘if you want to succeed double your failure rate.’ It crops up all the time on LinkedIn, motivational images, and youtube pep talks.

The guy who said was a man named Thomas J. Watson. Aside from putting IBM on the map, Watson was hailed as the world’s greatest salesman when he died. Despite his legacy being reduced to a quick shot of motivation, there is a deep wisdom to what he says:

Everyone wants to be so good that they never fail, but maybe the reality is that we have to fail more.

Much more.

HOW OFTEN ARE YOU FAILING?

If you were to stop and think about your goal – maybe it’s getting better at dating, starting a business, or writing a movie – how often have you allowed yourself to fail at it?

And I don’t mean failed to even start. I mean you started an attempt. You saw it through. And it ended in complete and utter failure.

You got rejected. The business went bust. The script sucked.

If you’re honest, like most of us the answer would probably be: ‘I haven’t.’

Everyone wants something, but rarely we do ever try to get it. Instead, the closest we get is trying to figure out ways to avoid failure. We engage in perfectionism, we try to learn as much as we can, or worse, we procrastinate our way out of ever trying.

So our dream… stays exactly that. A dream. Lost in our defense mechanisms.

One of the easiest ways to understand how realistic your goals are is to take a look and see how hard you’re failing. If like the Tiger, all of your attempts have ended in failure – then you’re on the right track.

Why?

Because it means you’re actually trying. It means you actually have something to learn from. And it means you’re actually in the ballpark of eventually getting lucky.

You don’t kill an antelope without chasing one in the first place.

If, however, you’ve never failed, it’s probably because you’ve never tried. And because you’ve never tried, your goals just aren’t going to happen.

You aren’t being realistic.

If you want to develop charisma, you have to slog through years of being boring. If you want to meet women who think you’re great, you have to meet dozens who think you suck. If you want to write a great book, you have to write dozens that are unreadable garbage. If you want to have a great sex life, you have to get shot down by all the people who would never fuck you. If you want to run a successful business, you have to go bankrupt and live off baked beans… Or something like that.

Failure isn’t the indicator that you’re on the right track. But it IS the indicator that you’re actually on a track in the first place. If you aren’t failing, you aren’t doing anything. You aren’t moving. You aren’t growing.

You aren’t doing shit.

YOU DON’T FAIL BECAUSE YOU DON’T CARE

Failure is like any other shitty experience. It’s part and parcel with the good ones.

No matter what goal it is you’re trying to pursue, the majority of the experience will not be that enjoyable and most of your attempts will end in failure.

This is an immutable rule of life. People make entire careers selling self-help books which say this in slightly different ways. The thing you love is the thing you spend most of your time suffering through. The thing we love is the thing we fail at.

But if everyone knows this, why do we hide from failure so much?

The truth is that you fear failure because you care only about the result of your goal, not the process of actually attempting it. This is because it isn’t really about you doing it, it’s about achieving it changing who you are.

Your goal isn’t an intrinsic expression of who you are, it’s a band-aid for your emotional issues. You don’t want to write because you have something to say – you want fame and adoration. You don’t want a great sex life because you’re in touch with your sexuality – you want emotional validation and dependency. You don’t want to succeed at business so you can add value to your own life and others – you want it so you can show everyone how much better you are than them.

Your goal isn’t so much as a goal as it is wish fulfillment for your self-esteem issues. And this is why you don’t achieve it.

Because in failing to achieve it, you reinforce the idea that you’re the opposite of what it is you wish you were. And your rock bottom self-esteem can’t handle that.

So it stops you from even trying.

THE UNSUNG BENEFIT OF EMBRACING FAILURE

There is an obvious benefit to embracing failure. You learn from the experience.

The more you fail, the more you know where you’re going wrong. And the more you know where you’re going wrong, the more likely you are to go right.

You’re also more likely to be lucky. It’s no wonder that Thomas J. Watson was considered the world’s greatest salesman. He understood the importance of luck and it’s relationship to failure.

When he said ‘double your failure rate’ one of the things he was saying is that you don’t get lucky without repeatedly being even more unlucky. So you should make a habit out of being unlucky all the time.

Rejection therapy is something which embraces this idea and makes it practical. You continually expose yourself to rejection. Some people do this for confidence, and many guys do it to get over their approach anxiety. Whatever your goal is, continually exposing yourself to rejection is the right way to go.

But the unsung benefit of embracing failure is the effect it has on your mindset. Because you’re okay if you fail, you’re not as dependent on your goal succeeding. You’re doing what you do for you, and nobody else.

This, incidentally, is what I argue is the core principle of being attractive.

In sales, this is where you develop an indifference to the whether the buyer purchases your product or not. You know it’s benefits and you know it’s value to them, but you’re okay with their decision either way. You don’t need them to buy. They can take it or leave it.

More often than not this makes them more likely to buy it.

Whereas when your entire attitude is ‘please buy my product.’ What do you think happens? It’s the exact same thing in dating. When you’re happy in your own life, having a great time as you are, your results increase.

When you embrace failure for failure’s sake, you learn to become okay with your neediness.

In other words, in failing, you learn to get out of your own way.

 

Liked this article? Help me make an impact, and SHARE it on social media.

If you want to go into more depth with any of the topics I write about and build a structured plan for applying them to your day to day life – then check out my Dating and Personal Development Coaching service for a free 15-minute consultation.

And be sure to check out my free ebooks on dating and anxiety.

If you want an easy way to stay up to date on the latest content, like me on Facebook, and you’ll always be the first to know.

If there’s anything in this article you want to go in more depth on, or you just want to get in touch – drop me a message here! It’s completely free.

Photo by Mathew Schwartz on Unsplash

WANT A BETTER DATING LIFE?

Yeah, I know. You’ve read enough. But this is important. I made a dating course. Like, a really big dating course.

It’s over 8 hours of video content, 30 lessons, and over 80 exercises. It covers everything you need to know from making yourself more attractive, building sexual confidence, having great dates, and finding the right women for you.

It’s based on years of experience, a library’s worth of scientific research, and just the right amount of common sense. So stop listening to me and check it out for yourself.

CLICK ME!

Share this:

  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Pocket (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Tumblr (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Pinterest (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on WhatsApp (Opens in new window)
  • Click to email this to a friend (Opens in new window)

Filed Under: Life Advice & Personal Development Tagged With: Anxiety, Failure, Fear, Success

How To Build Strong Character – The No Bullshit Way

by Visko Matich · Apr 19, 2018

how to build strong character

WHEN IT COMES TO MY CHARACTER, I’m lazy. If money wasn’t an issue, I’d spend most of my life thinking, reading, or wasting time with my friends. As much as I have things I want to achieve that require work, I don’t actually enjoy working. I don’t enjoy the thought of writing, I just enjoy the things that enter my head; I definitely don’t enjoy blogging (or anything internet related), and I sure-as-shit don’t enjoy sitting in a room alone giving myself headaches. Most of the time, it’s something I don’t want to do. I get bored and can’t be bothered. And hell, why should I bother?

For most of my life, that’s what’s going to hold me back. I’m lazy.

In some ways, laziness has been a benefit for me. It’s made me think outside the box and choose a unique lifestyle for myself. But as far as personal development is concerned, it’s always there trying to hold me back. It’s just part of my character.

And that’s the problem.

It’s part of my character.

Personal development is really a single problem. We have an idea of a life we want to live and personal development is the act of bringing that life into being.

But if it’s so simple, why do so many people fail?

When we look at personal development we see it as actions we need to take in the present that will affect outcomes in the future. Build better habits, exercise more, get a better social life. But rarely do we account for two fundamental problems:

  1. The reason we want a different life is that the one we have right now is unfulfilling.
  2. The reason we have an unfulfilling life is we have, over the course of our life, built a person who is incapable of getting the life we want.

Therefore, immediately, we are hit with a roadblock to any progress. The person we’ve built over the course of our life just isn’t up to the task of changing our lives. When it comes to having the life we want, we just aren’t the kind of person who can have it.

The bad news is that, if you’re trying to build a new life and failing, it’s probably because you suck. The good news is, you can build someone new.

(This is one of the first thing I get guys to do in my Complete Dating Course. When they improve their character, everything falls into place).

People usually see personal development as a set of habits that they need to engage with in order to be successful. An example of this would be an entrepreneur learning that he needs to work 70 hour work weeks in order to get started.

Sounds simple, right?

But when he’s used to spending most of the day in his underpants, waking up at 2 in the afternoon and has a chronic fear of failure – any attempt to pursue this 70 hour work week is going to be met with failure, or eventual burnout and then failure. 

The problem isn’t due to his habits, it’s due to his character. Before we get to the habit, we have to deal with the person pursuing the habit.

HOW TO BUILD STRONG CHARACTER THAT DOESN’T SUCK

Strong character is becoming increasingly rare. In the age of limited attention, instant gratification and soaring rates of anxiety, we are no longer exposing ourselves to lives that encourage the development of strong character; in fact, we’re often doing the exact opposite – we’re making our character weaker.

Now, before I go on, let me set a definition of character:*

Especially related to achievement, character is the quality on which you can rely on to do what needs to be done. Character is what determines how you respond to your emotions (such as fear) and it is how you respond to challenge (such as the stresses of effort).

Feel some kind of talent inside you? Character is what builds that.

Tempted to take a day off because you’re not feeling it? Character is what prevents that.

Feel afraid and not sure you can act? Character is what makes sure you do, despite that fear.

Character is what lies beneath all the efforts you make to change and propel your life forward. Character is what determines the longevity, direction, and speed of that change and propulsion.

As you can imagine, weak character is going to make life difficult and strong character is going to make life easier.

When we have weak character, our ability to drive our lives towards ones which require great effort and success is greatly diminished. Our efforts to reshape our habits will begin to peter out, our attempts at challenging projects will be crippled by procrastination, and what we perceive to be aiming high, will, in fact, be aiming low due to our unconscious fear of failure.

So if character is the problem, how do we build it?

You’ve been consciously / unconsciously building your character since you were a kid.

In my experience, character is built by:

  1. Taking responsibility for our problems.
  2. Taking on tasks that require a large amount of effort.
  3. Taking on tasks that require the confrontation of fear.

The more we engage with the above, the more we express and confront our character. By this I mean, we develop our character through expression (whether that be in confrontation, creatively, romantically, and so on) and through being confronted by, what Richard Brooks calls our central flaw (i.e aggression, supplication, laziness, lack of self-worth).

In essence, character is built by confronting life, and in doing so, developing and confronting ourselves.

This is why strong character is a rare quality; nobody does much of the above, and they, like you until now, have failed to pay attention to the person they’ve been building and are continuing to build. Their character until now has been something that has not been consciously cultivated. Instead, it has been built on its own accord, to an end result that may or may not be wanted.

I’d wager that’s the case for you. It sure as hell is for me, and everyone else I’ve met.

Now, the method for developing character is simple, but the process has a slight hiccup:

It is extremely difficult and takes years.

Unfortunately, this means two things:

  1. There is no better time than today.
  2. It’s going to require sacrifice.

BUILDING CHARACTER TAKES SACRIFICE

Building someone new comes at the expense of the person you were; often, the sacrifice of the person you were. This, in plain terms, can mean a few things:

Leaving your job because it’s unfulfilling and takes all your time; moving to a new city to start afresh; going to sleep earlier; waking up earlier; stopping drinking; leaving your toxic relationship; quitting masturbating; cutting contact with a bad friend.

In essence, this element is simple – you remove from your life whatever element is going to get in the way of you building stronger character, and through that stronger character, developing the habits to achieve the life you want to live.

This is where most people go wrong. They see personal development as an act of adding things to their lives. They want to add better habits, more confidence, more hours worked; but in actual fact, the solution is often the reverse.

You strip away, simplify, and sacrifice. You leave yourself with less, and get really good at what’s left. Instead of adding elements, you focus on what you can remove.

As our lives go on, they often fill with clutter that fills up our time and drains our emotional resources. It is this clutter that is both the product of our drained emotional resources and time and the cause of it. It’s a cycle feeds on itself and continues.

This is why sacrifice is so important. Arguably the most important step.

You cannot have the life you want by continuing to live the life you don’t.

Let me say that again, as it’s the heart of this article:

You cannot have the life you want by continuing to live the life you don’t.

You have to make sacrifices. You have to say no to everything that isn’t essential or helpful, and strip down so you’re left with two things:

  1. The essential elements you need, which you will now get better at, thus developing better character.
  2. Free time which you can now use to develop better character.

BUILDING CHARACTER REQUIRES HONESTY AND COURAGE

The most important trait you can develop when it comes to building character is brutal self-honesty. The second is courage.

Brutally self-honesty shows you what needs to be done and courage is what have you actually do it. Brutal self-honesty shows you where you’re holding yourself back and courage is what has you confront that flaw.

There are countless things that anyone could recommend to build character – boxing, novel writing, entrepreneurship – but in many ways, the actual challenge itself is irrelevant. The challenge is naturally arrived upon when you mix and develop those two traits of honesty and courage. You figure out where you need to be confronted, and you do it.

Now, you might be thinking: I’m not that honest with myself and I’m not that brave.

No problem.

 Both of these traits are ones that grow and develop through expression and wither through repression. The more you engage with them, the stronger they get. You might be the most cowardly guy in the world, but the more you engage with small acts of courage, the more you’ll get comfortable with the big ones. Likewise, you could be unaware of your own behavior, but simply sitting down and asking yourself why (and continuing to do so) would open up new realms of insight into your own motivations and your own flaws.

Each trait develops the more you consciously choose to express it.

And if it’s that simple, then building character is an act of conscious will. Building character, like developing courage and self-honesty, is something we willfully and consciously engage with. It is an act of presence, and engagement between ourselves and the world. We decide to build character, so we decide to be more honest, and we decide to be more courageous.

At the start of this article, I wrote about myself being lazy. I said that laziness was part of my character. And it is. It’s something I deal with every day. Through being honest with myself, I’ve come to learn where it comes from – fear of failure, lack of self-worth – and through courage I’ve learned to suck it up and get working anyway, eventually leading myself to big decisions that radically altered the trajectory of my life; like quitting my comfy job, traveling the world and working for myself, despite being scared and not having the slightest idea what I’m doing.

YOU NEED TO MAKE YOUR CHARACTER CONSCIOUS

Character is often described as the reaction to circumstances. People, myself included, often say that unforeseen events, like trauma, reveal who a person actually is. In my experience, this is half true. What actually happens is that you’re confronted with the character that was already there, you’d just failed to see it until now. Sometimes this is good, sometimes this is bad.

But neither is permanent.

When we decide to make our character conscious, we are taking more control over the individual that reacts to circumstance. And in terms of our future, we are cultivating the kind of individual who is capable of dealing with the problems confronted by the life we wish to have.

To return to the entrepreneur example, this would be developing the kind of character that is autonomous, self-motivating, self-supervising and thus capable of managing their own work ethic. But if you were trying to improve your dating life, this would be developing the kind of character that enjoyed life and was comfortable with rejection and sexual expression.

Whatever your personal development is being directed towards, it is your character that is the foundation on which your results will be built, on which your habits will be built, so it is the character that you should focus most of your effort on building.

Because once you’ve built it, everything else will take care of itself.

 

*I chose this definition of character as it is one that defines how strong character specifically relates to achievement and thus personal development. However, character also encompasses much more, like empathy, bravery, generosity, and every other trait you can imagine. I plan to write about this in future, but none of this was particularly relevant to what I was writing now.

 

Photo by Ricardo Gomez Angel on Unsplash

Photo by Michał Parzuchowski on Unsplash

WANT A BETTER DATING LIFE?

Yeah, I know. You’ve read enough. But this is important. I made a dating course. Like, a really big dating course.

It’s over 8 hours of video content, 30 lessons, and over 80 exercises. It covers everything you need to know from making yourself more attractive, building sexual confidence, having great dates, and finding the right women for you.

It’s based on years of experience, a library’s worth of scientific research, and just the right amount of common sense. So stop listening to me and check it out for yourself.

CLICK ME!

Share this:

  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Pocket (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Tumblr (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Pinterest (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on WhatsApp (Opens in new window)
  • Click to email this to a friend (Opens in new window)

Filed Under: Archives, Life Advice & Personal Development Tagged With: Courage, Identity, Personal Development, Psychology, Self Help, Self Improvement, Success

The 3 Biggest Mistakes That Screw Up Your 20s

by Visko Matich · Jan 31, 2018

 

IT WOULD BE EASY for me to say that I wasn’t financially literate, I looked for confidence in all the wrong places, I really wanted to be liked (and loved) and this made me needy, I didn’t know how to have fun, I didn’t work hard enough and I didn’t treat my time like it was important.

But those mistakes, whilst irritating, are stuff we all go through. They’re obvious. And if I’ve learned anything about mistakes, it’s this:

Not all mistakes are made equal.

The shitty thing about growing up is that nobody teaches you how to become an adult. The truth is, you have to teach yourself. The mistakes that you make in life are the problems you have to solve because it’s in solving them that you become the adult nobody could ever teach you to become.

Looking back on my early twenties, it’s become apparent to me that past the detail of my life there were patterns of mistakes, each with specific underlying principles, that were directly getting in the way of my growth as a person. And far from being obvious at the time, these patterns were almost impossible to spot.

So they continued, and instead of growing up, I stood still.

Eventually, I slowly (read: far too slowly) figured out what was going on, and started to fix these mistakes. Some of them were easy, but other’s took years. And it was midway through all of this fixing that I realized something:

These mistakes weren’t unique to me.

Far from being a special snowflake – these were in fact patterns of mistakes I saw in everyone. Sometimes much older, sometimes much younger – it didn’t really matter.

The patterns just kept showing up.

Which got me thinking. If I could fix them, then everyone else could too.

YOU’RE HOLDING ON TO CHILDISH THINGS

When you leave school, university, and your parents behind, life suddenly becomes very different. Instead of being surrounded by people your own age, you’re working with people of all ages; instead of your parents paying for everything, you have to pay for everything; instead of everything being simple and uncomplicated, everything is complex, difficult and often threatening.

It’s a cliche, but the world is a scary place. It’s a constant – whether you like it not – competition, where you have to compete with other people and your own shortcomings in order to provide a life for yourself, and in many ways, in order to be happy. Life after childhood is a series of complex, mature problems that we have to take responsibility for, or they will dominate our lives and determine their direction.

If we don’t get financially smart, we get financially trapped. If we don’t get good at dating, we end up in dead end, unhappy relationships, or worse, alone. If we don’t develop a good work ethic, we hamstring our career or kill our dreams. And all of these, rather than being simple, are complex issues that require us to use a lot of emotional horsepower.

In other words, it’s incredibly easy to get in our own way.

This is why, when confronted with this new reality of adult life, we often sought a retreat into childhood.

It’s funny, looking back, to see how, frightened by the idea of what I needed to be in order to have the life I wanted, I instead prolonged my teenage life well into my early 20s in order to dull the constant feeling of anxiety the world gave me. I was well aware of what I needed to do, but instead of building myself up and educating myself, I retreated to video games and shallow escapism. Games where I could temporarily make myself feel like a winner, and shallow stories that fed my fantasies about a simpler, more black and white life; where I was special and important, instead of not.

This was comforting, and in the context of my youth, seemed harmless. After all, a lot of people my age were acting this way. Hell, most of western culture seemed to be acting this way. Geek culture had spread across all mediums and instead of our lives and hobbies and interests changing and growing to reflect the deepening challenge of our lives, culture seemed to be feeding a demand for the exact opposite; something that nourished the desire for the cocoon of childhood to return.

The complexities of a struggling adult life were replaced by power fantasies of superheroes or normal guys becoming drug kingpins – both under the guise of being ‘mature’, even though, at their core they were just more stories about a wish to not be powerless.

Dating, one of the most challenging things we can do emotionally, was reduced to what was essentially a slot machine. And reality TV fed us fantasies of being attractive and getting attention.

And finances? Well, they were just fucking boring. Savings? Investments? Pensions? Cashflow? What benefit was that to a life?

Like anyone else, I sought avoidance whenever I could. And it hurt my life.

My work ethic stunk, and I wasted years procrastinating. My dating life was shallow, stupid, and made me a vain, insecure, try hard. My finances were a mess and constantly ate away at me in the back of my mind.

And all of this, compounded on itself until a single voice echoed in my head:

“You can’t do this.”

When we turn our backs on reality and run for comfort, we are unconsciously telling ourselves that we’re not capable of taking responsibility for our own lives; that we don’t have what it takes to solve the actual problems we’re being confronted with.

When we drown ourselves in power fantasies, we’re telling ourselves life would be better if we were someone else. When we drown ourselves in fantasies of love, we’re telling ourselves life would be better if we felt like someone else. When we frivolously blow all our money and fail to secure a solid financial foundation for ourselves, we’re telling ourselves that consequences aren’t our problem. And all of this just makes us want to bury our heads in the sand even more.

The retreat from the responsibility of adulthood is nothing other than a retreat from the challenge of taking command of who we are.

And it’s a retreat that stunts our maturity and cripples our potential.

But if we took on the problems adult life puts in front of us – if we engaged with a world that was intellectually and emotionally challenging; if we developed a robust and consistent work ethic; if we built an exciting and rewarding dating life that stemmed from our interests and personality; if we took steps to develop a growing and secure financial situation for ourselves, we would be taking on the challenge of our lives in a way that made us leave every stage of our lives behind, and develop our abilities and personality into capable reflections of the world in which we existed. Reflections that thrived on the challenges presented.

And I guarantee, if you did that, you’d look at all that childish shit as it always was. A dream of being the person you are now.

YOU’RE WAITING FOR A FEELING THAT YOU CANNOT CONTROL

Early into my twenties, I was struck by an idea by for a movie that I felt was entirely original and needed to be written immediately. Seeking to coax more of it from my head, I plugged music into my ears and let the sounds take my small kernel of imagination and grow it into a vast world; one I could shape into a story.

Once home, I wrote a few notes, messaged my friends about it, then left it, touching it occasionally over the next few years.

To this day, it’s never been finished.

I imagine that you, like me, have often found yourself in a place where you’ve been seized by an idea, and felt such a strong feeling towards it (for instance happiness, aggression, passion) that you felt it was extremely important for you to pursue it. Yet, after starting, the initial feeling begins to dwindle, and so does your effort, until you cease pursuing it entirely, and your idea that was conceived with such a great strength of emotion ends up as just another scrap of paper in the trash – or worse, a reminder of how you don’t “finish things.”

You start things because of a feeling, and then stop them because the feeling goes away.

This same principle I see in countless people looking to change their lives or, often, just make small changes. They feel something strongly, they make a decision, they take action, the feeling dwindles, they stop. The shame they felt at their weight as they entered the new year fades away, and their resolution to go the gym fails; the energy they felt, when imagining their story, dissipates, and they cease to write it; the ambition they felt towards starting their business dwindles under the difficulties, and it becomes just another aborted startup.

Now, sometimes this is fine – we get older, and the way we feel about things change. I no longer chase girls like I used to, and I certainly spend less time in the gym. But more often than not – we give up on the things that are actually important to us (i.e our creative passions) because the feeling just isn’t there. We’re not in the mood, we lack motivation, we lack passion. So we stop.

That is, until we feel something again, start as we did before, only to stop, once the feeling fades away.

Repeat ad infinitum.

It would be easy to say that rather being in love with what it is we want to do, that instead we simply love the feeling associated – the heightened sense of being, of purpose – or perhaps we just love the fantasies that our imagination brings to life alongside them – of success and adulation.

This was largely the case for me.

I would start and stop, over and over, enjoying the idea of success rather than the effort required to bring it about. But even when through discipline I started to avoid that kind of thinking – the pattern of starting and stopping over and over didn’t cease. Because, as ever, I was relying on my feeling to keep me in the game.

When I felt good, the days were easy. When I felt bad, I didn’t bother. And the bad days came a lot more often than the good.

That’s the lesson I failed to learn: it doesn’t matter whether it’s a good day or bad; it doesn’t matter how you feel. All that matters is the consistency of effort.

The basic principle of anything difficult is that some days it’ll come easy, some days it won’t – and that’s fine. Your feelings are transient and fleeting and based on hundreds of other factors, many of which are difficult to control. In many instances, the feelings you’ll feel towards the work you need to do are beyond your control and take care of themselves.

That means the only thing that is in your control is whether you continue to keep being productive despite the feeling. This means doing what needs to be done.

In other words, discipline.

YOU’RE PRETENDING TO BE SOMEONE YOU’RE NOT

The longer you fail to perceive who you actually are, the longer you prevent yourself from solving your real issues. The longer you spend pretending to be someone else, whether to yourself or others, the longer you will never develop confidence in who you are, and will always be plagued by insecurity.

When I was a teenager, I was socially anxious, insecure and sensitive to the opinions of others. When invited to social events, I told myself I wasn’t interested “in that sort of thing” and instead hid away in my room and played video-games. Later, when I was at university, I alternated between this same avoidance, or extreme overcompensation, where I drank heavily and acted like an idiot. This continued for some time, until, in my early twenties, it dawned on me that:

  1. I was socially anxious.
  2. I was avoiding confronting this.
  3. As a result of this avoidance, I was dealing with that anxiety by fleeing it or trying to smother it.

I realized that as long as I kept doing the same things I was doing, my social anxiety (the true problem) would never change, and I would be stuck being swept around by my various ways of trying to deal with it. I realized that because I had failed to perceive what my actual problem was, I incapable of ever actually solving it.

Now, you might say, well, if you were acting in that way, wasn’t it obvious you were suffering from anxiety?

No, it wasn’t.

Because the other way I dealt with this problem, was by trying to create an image of myself where none of this existed. Just as I did with myself, I didn’t want anyone to perceive me as I actually was.

And so, my focus was almost always external.

“Does this person like me?”

“Does this person find me funny?”

“Will those people reject me?”

In other words “will these people treat me like someone who is anxious and thus confirm what I am fleeing from?”

Eventually, I realized what was going on, and through honesty, therapy and effort, I was able to heal what was causing my anxiety. But this principle, of failing to perceive myself accurately, and thus pretending to others, is a principle I have spotted everywhere. And it always has the same implosive effect.

  • The guy who’s insecure about his self-worth compensates by going on about his intelligence, what he knows, how he’s right and builds an identity around this. As a result, he rarely recognizes what he doesn’t know, and thus leaves huge gaps in his thinking, hamstringing his intelligence. (This is actually called the Dunning Krueger effect).
  • The guy who’s scared of violence compensates by going to the gym and creating a large physique and carries himself around aggressively, only to watch the facade come crashing down around him when confronted with real violence. 
  • The guy who lacks self-esteem doesn’t respond well to feedback. As a result, when people accurately point out he’s not very hard working and easily distracted, he gets aggressive and rejects everything they’re saying – regardless of whether it’s actually true or not.

In each case – whether it be acknowledging what he doesn’t know, learning how to fight, or accepting that feedback is not a criticism of who he is, but what he does – the best solution is always to confront the source of the actual problem, as the solution the problem often creates of its own accord usually just sends you in a repetitive, self-destructive cycle.

This is, I believe, why people stay stuck in such repetitive cycles. Whether it be anxiety over their future, their safety, their parents, their relationships; whatever it is, as long as they fail to perceive it as it actually is, they’ll be constantly chained to its control over their behavior.

So how to fix it?

Honesty.

Take a long, hard, honest look at yourself. Be brutal. Take a look at your actions and choices and really question what they say about you? Take a look at your patterns of behavior and consider what might actually be motivating them. Ask yourself – what am I really accomplishing with this choice of behavior? What am I actually trying to achieve? And why?

9 times out of 10 you’ll be trying to protect yourself from something. That ‘something’ is your real issue.

Fear of failure, fear of intimacy, fear of rejection. Fear of anything, experienced in a way that’s unique to you.

Then, once you’ve found it and explored it, you’ve got to confront it.

Sometimes, this means making taking certain actions. If you’re socially anxious, this means leaving your comfort zone and going in the opposite direction your anxiety is trying to compel you to go. If you’re afraid of the opposite sex, this means gradually pushing yourself to approach them more and build a dating life. Whatever your issue is, taking actions that directly confront the issue are some of the most powerful ways to solve them.

But sometimes it just requires that you open up to someone else, anyone else, and let go of the shit that’s weighing you down and confining your life. This can be with friends, this can be with family, or it can be with a professional therapist.

In my own experience, all three work.

SHUT UP AND SOLVE YOUR PROBLEMS

When I look back on my early twenties, the most staggeringly obvious learning is that I failed to take responsibility for my own life. I looked for retreats into childlike avoidance whenever I could; I waited for things to feel good before I took on any challenges, and I failed to perceive myself, and what my problems actually were.

And as long as I was acting in that way, I failed to grow.

The more we hang onto childishness, the less we focus on the problems we need to solve. The more we wait to feel ready to take on those problems, the longer we will go without ever solving them. The longer we attempt to be someone else, both to ourselves and others, the longer we will never work on our actual flaws and capitalize on our actual strengths.

That is in a nutshell what happens over and over again.

But it doesn’t have to be that way.

When it comes to adult problems, there are generally three categories of stuff we need to keep in check, which when we do, result in the growth we desperately need.

Foundational problems

Essential, otherwise known as getting your shit together

  • Financial intelligence
  • Discipline and work ethic
  • Health
  • Career

Social problems

Has huge effects on your emotions

  • Social circle
  • Dating life
  • Family life

The Real Shit

By far the most important – the 80/20 rule of all of the above

  • Your ability to deal with your own emotions
  • Your understanding of yourself
  • The development of your self-confidence

When we keep these in check, we are actively solving the problems of our lives, and through that responsibility, are growing into a more capable version of ourselves.

At the beginning of this article, I said that nobody teaches you to be an adult. And I was telling the truth; nobody does. Becoming an adult is a by-product of making mistakes, creating problems, and solving those problems. Often that’s external things like finances or relationships; but in each of us, there are things we’ve carried over from childhood and our teenage years, that live within us and deeply affect who we are, what we want and what we will become. These are the problems that are unique to us, and that we owe it to ourselves to solve.

We cannot escape who we are. We’re stuck with ourselves for our entire lives. And because of this, we owe it to ourselves to take responsibility for what’s going on up there, to confront ourselves – in all our ugly, shitty, flawed ways – both externally and internally, and take care of our lives and how we feel about ourselves, and grow until everything that troubled us in the past is no longer an issue.

Because here’s the truth about getting older:

The problems never stop coming.

 

Liked this article? Help me make an impact, and share it on social media. Just click one of the icons at the bottom or top of the page. Thanks!

And make sure to subscribe to never miss a post, or alternatively, like me on Facebook, so you’re always up to date on the latest content.

If there’s anything in this article you want to go in more depth on, or you just want to get in touch – drop me a message here! It’s completely free.

Photo by Martin Reisch on Unsplash

 

 

WANT A BETTER DATING LIFE?

Yeah, I know. You’ve read enough. But this is important. I made a dating course. Like, a really big dating course.

It’s over 8 hours of video content, 30 lessons, and over 80 exercises. It covers everything you need to know from making yourself more attractive, building sexual confidence, having great dates, and finding the right women for you.

It’s based on years of experience, a library’s worth of scientific research, and just the right amount of common sense. So stop listening to me and check it out for yourself.

CLICK ME!

Share this:

  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Pocket (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Tumblr (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Pinterest (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on WhatsApp (Opens in new window)
  • Click to email this to a friend (Opens in new window)

Filed Under: Archives, Best Articles, Life Advice & Personal Development, Uncategorised Tagged With: Achievement, Anxiety, Certainty, Comfort zone, Courage, Dating, Finding Our Passion, Game, Goals, Hard work, Identity, Life, Life Direction, Life Experience, Life Purpose, Neediness, Passion, Personal Development, Positive Beliefs, Process, Procrastination, Psychology, Purpose, Relationships, Self Help, Self Improvement, Social Skills, Success, Talking

How To Develop The Self-Trust That’ll Keep You Going No Matter What

by Visko Matich · Oct 21, 2017

WHEN I FIRST DECIDED I wanted to change my life, the most palpable objection I faced was not from anyone else, but instead from my own mind. Young and naive, I believed that I inherently had the ability to achieve what I wanted to do; I believed it so strongly that it didn’t seem like a question as to whether I could accomplish it or not. But just as I believed this, I also knew, with certainty, that I could never trust myself to do it. I knew that even though I could accomplish what I wanted to, I was almost guaranteed not to. As if in response to my self-belief, a voice would say:

“Yes you could do it, but you are going to piss your future away.”

This wasn’t self-loathing or lack of confidence in myself, it was instead a simple assessment of how I had behaved to date, and the actions I’d taken (or rather, failed to take) with any consistency.

As far as my life was concerned, I was someone who started things then abandoned them. I was someone who got periodically obsessed, burned myself out, procrastinated, doubted myself, then gave up.

I was a quitter.

And really, given the overwhelming evidence – a lackluster school performance, failure at not one but two university courses, and a tendency to fantasize about my future rather than actually finish any attempts to achieve it – why would I think otherwise? Why would I trust myself?

When the way we’ve lived results in a life we’re unsatisfied with, then more often than not it’s due to the bad habits we’ve accumulated on the way. When we’re young and stupid, we give no thought to the life we’re building for ourselves, and often let various unconscious inclinations lead us to develop patterns of behavior that create a life we would never have consciously chosen.

So we want it to change. But just as we unconsciously built a life we never wanted, in equal measure do we learn to lack trust in our ability to build a life we’d consider worthwhile. Even though we might believe we have the capability to achieve what we want, we have zero trust in our ability to actually do it.

The trick then is rebuilding that trust.

LESSONS FROM A SALESMAN

To start, I need to talk about selling. Why? Because that’s where I came up with this idea.

Sales jobs, if you haven’t had one, are what I’d describe as the worst-best jobs ever. The worst, because you’re constantly exposed to how much bad performance crushes your self-esteem, and the best, because they show you just how ruthlessly productive you have to be to get exceptional results.

In order to stay profitable in a sales business, you have to develop a work ethic that is reliable. Sales is an emotional process. The closer you get to a sale, the more heightened your emotions become; positive and negative. When things are going well, you get excited, energized and elated; when things are going bad you get anxious, stressed and irritable. And it is this exact heightened state of emotions that engineers the haphazard work ethic of sales employees.

When things are going well, their priories shift. When things are going bad their priorities shift. But in reality, it is rare that the actual nature of their effort should ever change. In any sale, the fundamental elements are almost always the same. In any sales pipeline*, the fundamental elements that go into building that pipeline are almost always the same. Therefore, it stands the reason that the same consistent actions should be carried out.

Outside of sales, the importance of a work-ethic can be harder to grasp. In activities that aren’t like sales (i.e directly tied to your income), it can be harder to emotionally connect with the importance of consistent actions. In fact, more often than not people confuse their lack of emotional connection to their work for an inability at it or a fear of failure. Often, it’s neither, it’s simply the perspective they’re viewing the work from. But if you’re building a business, writing a novel, or developing a saleable skill (like, for instance, coding), then the consistent actions you take determine the eventual success you will have in that field – no matter how far off or abstract they are.*

Whilst the eventual reward might seem far away, it’s eventual materialization exists in the here and now; in the choices and actions you are making day by day. In sales, we described this as “every action you take now pays off 3 months from now”, and it lies at the heart of what necessitates a solid work ethic.

And in my experience, this work ethic always boils down to three truths.

THE THREE TRUTHS OF AN EXCEPTIONAL WORK ETHIC

1) Focused work trumps ‘hard work’.

2) Consistent, targeted work trumps ‘hard work’.

3) Trust is built on consistency and predictability.

Truths 1 and 2 are simple. When talking about their work ethics, people often like to brag about how hard they work, how many hours they put in, and what time in the morning they like to wake up and so on and so forth. But in my experience, the amount of time worked isn’t the crucial factor, and in fact, isn’t always the best perspective.

And that’s for a simple reason.

Burnout.

The more aggressively you push your body, the quicker you will burn out in the long term (crashing, losing motivation), and the quicker you will burn out in the short term (procrastination, creative blocks).

This is not to say that you shouldn’t push yourself (you can and always should), but your metric of success for your work ethic should never, ever be the degree to which you’ve pushed yourself; but instead the caliber of the work ethic you’re engaging with.

When I say focused work trumps hard work, I mean to say that 1 hour of attentive, focused work trumps 3 hours of distracted, multitasked work. When I say that consistent, targeted work trumps hard work, I mean that 1 hour, repeated each day, of specific and productive work, trumps 3 hours of random, unpredictable working.

This means that your work should be judged not on how much time it required, but by…

THE THREE METRICS OF SELF TRUST

  1. How much undivided attention you give your work.
  1. Whether you do your work every day.
  1. Whether your work was specifically targeted in a way that has a strong influence on your desired outcome.

And the reason that all three of these metrics are important is that, when combined, they bring us to the 3rd truth:

Trust.

The easiest way to stay on top of an excellent work ethic is to have the trust in yourself that you are capable of achieving the work you need to achieve and that you are definitely going to do it. And this truth is built on nothing more than a reflection on your own consistent and predictable output, that in turn nets you constant and predictable results. The way we apply our energy informs the habits we build. The habits we build inform the person we become. The person we become not only informs the results we get but the trust in what we can continue to get.

When you’ve put in consistent effort towards your work, you’ve developed the trust that means you’ll never stop.

 

*A sales pipeline is a rolling forecast of prospective deals that are currently in process and may or may not occur.

*If they’re right actions, that is. For instance, writing a lot is a more efficient at making you a better writer than reading a lot is.

 

Photo by Anthony Intraversato on Unsplash

 

Liked this article? Help me make an impact, and share it on social media. Just click one of the icons at the bottom or top of the page. Thanks!

And make sure to subscribe to never miss a post, or alternatively, like me on Facebook, so you’re always up to date on the latest content.

If there’s anything in this article you want to go in more depth on, or you just want to get in touch – drop me a message here! It’s completely free.

WANT A BETTER DATING LIFE?

Yeah, I know. You’ve read enough. But this is important. I made a dating course. Like, a really big dating course.

It’s over 8 hours of video content, 30 lessons, and over 80 exercises. It covers everything you need to know from making yourself more attractive, building sexual confidence, having great dates, and finding the right women for you.

It’s based on years of experience, a library’s worth of scientific research, and just the right amount of common sense. So stop listening to me and check it out for yourself.

CLICK ME!

Share this:

  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Pocket (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Tumblr (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Pinterest (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on WhatsApp (Opens in new window)
  • Click to email this to a friend (Opens in new window)

Filed Under: Archives, Best Articles, Life Advice & Personal Development Tagged With: Achievement, Goals, Hard work, Identity, Life, Life Direction, Life Experience, Life Purpose, Passion, Personal Development, Positive Beliefs, Process, Procrastination, Psychology, Purpose, Self Help, Self Improvement, Success

3 Unexpected Life Lessons From The Greatest Warrior of All Time

by Visko Matich · Sep 17, 2017

KOJIRŌ SASAKI stood on the beach waiting for his opponent. He looked out along the shore, and across the rolling waves, but there was no sign. He had waited for hours; they had all waited for hours.

The year was 1612 and the location was Ganryu island, located off the coast of the Bizen Province in Japan. Sasaki was a masterful swordsman, who eschewed the traditional katana in favor of a ‘No-Dachi’; a long and heavy two-handed sword considered by most to be too cumbersome to be effective. But despite its length and weight, Sasaki wielded the sword with incredible speed, accuracy, and grace; basing his strikes off of a swallows tail in flight.

He had fought many duals before, and he had never lost. That’s why they called him ‘The Demon of the Western Provinces.’

His opponent was a man named Musashi Miyamoto. A vagabond and Ronin, Musashi was known for his heavy drinking, his unkempt appearance, and his flagrant disregard for the conventions of the Samurai. Despite this, he, like Sasaki, was rumored to have fought many duels and never have lost.

For each man, the other was to be his greatest opponent. Yet Musashi was nowhere to be seen.

Stood on the beach, surrounded by officials and the noise of the ocean, Sasaki began to wonder. At the very least this was a sign of disrespect, at the worst it was a sign of cowardice and his opponent had fled.

As if to confirm his suspicion, the officials around him began to whisper to one another. “Perhaps he has fled.” “Yes, he has run away in fear!” They said.

Sasaki wondered. Perhaps he had fled.

———

A few miles south of the beach, in a small inlet, a fisherman sat in his dingy. The sun was hot but wasn’t a bother. He had been paid handsomely by his passenger; a strange, disheveled looking man who sat hunched over at the end of the boat. The man, who as was usual for him, was hungover, wiped the sweat from his brow stared up at the sun, then grinned at the fisherman. Almost in contrast to his unconventional appearance, he looked happy.

Reaching down into the belly of the dingy, the man picked up a spare oar, and drawing a knife from his belt began to carve strips of wood from it. After some time and many blade-strokes, the belly of the dingy had been filled with shavings and the oar was long and curved in a smooth angle like a katana. The man smiled at his work.

“Let’s go.” He said.

Musashi Miyamoto had woken up drunk that day, and spent most of his journey to the island passed out; but his strange appearance and lateness were not accidents or flaws of character, but rather his strategy itself. Having won his first duel at the age of 13, Musashi was no stranger to combat and was something of an expert at killing samurai. Over the course of his life, he had fought in wars, killed entire dojos, and traveled far, killing famous, notable warriors; all whilst being a masterless Ronin himself.

Killing samurai wasn’t just what he did, it was what he was. Not only did he know their techniques, but he also understood their code and culture. He knew how to get under their skin.

———

It was some hours into the afternoon when Sasaki spotted the boat on the horizon. Stepping forward and shading his eyes from the sun one of his officials shrieked “It’s him! It’s Miyamoto”, which sent all the officials running back and forth, flocking to and fro from Sasaki, unsure of what to do.

Grabbing the nearest man, Sasaki looked into his stunned eyes and said “My sword.” The man stared, mouth agape then fled up the shore to a small hut, shouted at a peasant woman, then hurried back carrying a large, sheathed weapon. Sasaki took it from him and securing the sheath and hilt in each palm strode down the beach towards the shoreline.

The boat was parked just offshore, in the shallow water. A small fisherman sat in the back, fixing a wide-brimmed straw hat to his head, and in the front, a ragged looking man cut the final touches on a large wooden carving, then sprang from the boat into the knee-high water.

The man waded to the shore, drenched from the knee down, and once free of the water stopped a few up the beach to brush the sand from his feet. Saski walked forward and took in his appearance. His clothes looked like they’d be worn for days. His face was pockmarked and unshaven. But it was his gaze that affronted Sasaki most. Behind his serious composure, the man’s eyes seemed to say “Oh, so this is Sasaki – Well, what of it?”

Sasaki’s face was a carved stone, and his eyes did not blink. The two men stared at each other for some time, until an official ran between the two, followed the flock. “Miyamoto,” he said, and Mushashi nodded. The officials all stared, and their heads turned between the two, back and forth, waiting for some kind of movement. Some were stunned, some were scared, and all of them standing on edge.

Striding forward, Sasaki gripped the hilt of his sword, adopted his footing (never too wide, never too short, with his feet loose and agile), and drawing the katana from its sheath, tossed the scabbard onto the sand.

Musashi looked at the sheath, then him, and with a new wildness in his eyes said: “if you have no use for your sheath, you are already dead.”

But Sasaki heard nothing. His hands did not tremble, his body did not move. His pulse was steady, his breathing was rhythmic. This, he had practiced. He was Sasaki Kojiro and he had never lost a duel. He knew this from experience, from what others told him, and from what he told himself in comfort, whenever he felt pangs of doubt or moral discomfort. He was Sasaki Kojiro, victory was as certain as it ever was, as it always was, not simply for the work and achievement he had so far accrued, but because of the being that he knew he was in relation to other men. The knowledge of his superiority to other men and his habitual expectation of their deference was why, despite his outward and internal physical calm, his mind blazed with fury. He was Sasaki Kojiro, and here was his opponent; a filthy, unkempt man who kept him waiting and arrived carrying a piece of wood. To any Samurai this would be a mark of dishonor, but to Sasaki, this was a disgrace.

Musashi stepped forward and their eyes met. He raised his weapon, an enormously long carved wooden oar, as long, if not longer than Sasaki’s own No-Dachi. His internal state was hidden, Sasaki detected that much, but his stance was fine, comfortable and confident; all the details of his body, his expression and the position of his sword spoke clearly; disgrace or no, Sasaki knew, as any master of a profession knows, that he was in the company of a man equal in his craft. Sasaki stepped forward, Musashi back; it seemed he too, had come to the same conclusion.

The officials gasped and sprang back. Many who were friends of Sasaki said nothing and simply stood horror-struck, tearing at their beards. A few seagulls had flown down to the shallow water, bobbing like boats, to watch the proceedings. All were silent, save for a young boy who at a slight movement from Sasaki burst into tears and fled towards the trees.

Sasaki felt calm now. His body was relaxed, but his grip was firm. His eyes, locked on Musashi, felt like dew drops. There was little sensation in him except for his breathing; but behind it, there was a disgust that was held for Musashi. He cared little for him and wanted to disgrace him by killing him on the beach.

A wave crashed and Sasaki struck a swift blow, Musashi moved and lashed out with his oar. “Ah ha!” Sasaki thought to himself, “that was the fatal strike!” Sasaki moved forward towards the sand. “He is defeated!” But there was a glare in his eyes, and he thought “What is this?” And could not recall where he was and what had occurred. “Yes, this is the beach.” He thought. Then, lying on his back in the sand, he grew tired, cared nothing for fighting, and forgot about that and everything else, and only wished for the sun to leave his sight.

— — —

Musashi Miyamoto stood above his opponent, watching him die. The officials were half-mad, some screaming and others stooping over to look at Sasaki.

Musashi, still trembling with nerves, felt great unease at how important the man had seemed only a few seconds earlier, only now to die peacefully on the sand, with a childlike smile on his face that was quite detached from the reality of everything that had occurred. He couldn’t help but think the man was quite beautiful, and he had destroyed something beautiful for no reason at all. He wished he could end all of this nonsense, wake the man up and talk to him. Instead, the man slowly stopped breathing, as the blood pooled around his chest.

Musashi felt a pang of sadness. Here was one of the greatest swordsman that ever lived, and now he was dead, and that was that. Musashi looked at him and bowed, then, leaving the officials with the body, he turned and marched down the beach, through the waves, and climbed back onto the boat. Some of the officials who loved Sasaki ran down the beach into the surf after him, swinging katanas and shouting, but it was too late, the tide had gone out and Musashi had gone.

— — —

Musashi Miyamoto* had fought in countless duels, but it would be this one that would change his life. Self-taught from a young age, Musashi had his first duel at the age of 13, where he struck down a Samurai. Continuing on to fight in wars and dueling, Mushashi came to know everything there was to know about combat, going so far as to develop his own style; which ignored most of the accepted teachings at the time, and was based largely on efficiency and practicality, removing all flowery movements.

Later in his life, he retired to a cave and would go on to write his treatise on life and strategy called “The Book of the Five Rings”, as well as his “Dokkodo”; his 21 rules for a disciplined life. Remembered mostly for his incredible fighting ability and for the wisdom of his later writings – Musashi has always struck me as a fascinating figure, not so much for what he accomplished, but because of the principles that allowed him to accomplish it. He’s a man who sought complete perfection in what he did, but at the same time completely spat in the face of the accepted culture of his time.

There are many lessons to learn from Musashi, but I believe it is these principles that serve to teach us the best lessons. Not just on achievement, but on living itself.

Here are the lessons of Musashi Miyamoto.

YOU’RE GOING ABOUT LEARNING IN ALL THE WRONG WAYS

It’s easy to think that in our desire to acquire mastery of a skill we have to rigorously adhere to the way of mastery that has gone before us. We ask “how do I write a book?”, “how do I start a business?”, “how do I have good relationships?” and we search and consume information that we believe will show us the way to master and achieve these various goals.

But in many cases, this is failing before we’ve even begun.

In many cases, there is no way, there’s only your way.

Musashi defeated every opponent he came across. No matter how much they trained, no matter which style they’d mastered, no matter how many people they’d beaten; they all lost.

Yet Musashi never had a master or even a formal style. He taught himself. In his own words:

“You can win with a long weapon, and yet you can also win with a short weapon. In short, the Way of the Ichi school is the spirit of winning, whatever the weapon and whatever its size.”

A Ronin from a young age, Musashi was forced (or rather, compelled) to wander through life figuring everything out for himself. His approach was unconventional from the outset, and in many ways seems to have been set in tone from his first duel, when, at the age of 13, he defeated a master samurai using the man’s own short sword and a wooden pole.

Because he taught himself, Musashi didn’t have a fighting style that was particular to anyone else; in fact, he invented his own. It’s a style that’s best captured in his own words: “I practice many arts and abilities — all things with no teacher”

Musashi approached the craft of fighting from a place of reality. Taught entirely through his own real-world experience and ruthless desire for perfection, Musashi was quick to disregard many of the accepted practices of other fighting styles – considering many of their movements unnecessary, impractical, and serving only to impress onlookers. Instead, his style was quick and efficient, utilizing both hands and simple, practical movements. The clearest embodiment of this was his choice to weird two swords, instead of one.

When we’re attempting something new we almost inevitably come to a head-on collision with our fear of failure. We feel constrained or withheld, we avoid and procrastinate, and we doubt and deny our ability. This is normal, hell I feel it every day, but it also causes us to look for ways to circumvent our fear and find a path towards our goal that will make us feel safe.

Like a guide, a teacher, or a master.

But if we stop for a moment, and really consider the skill we are trying to achieve, how often can the skill we desire not be learned with common sense? Is writing a book really that complicated? Is starting a business truly that confusing? Is having good relationships really a mystery?

Or are you just scared you’ll fail and not sitting down and using your own imagination and problem-solving abilities?

Musashi is an example I always return to when I think of self-trust. When I want to try something frightening and doubt myself, I always think:

  • How can I solve this problem?
  • What do I need to achieve in order to solve this?
  • What do I need to do in order to achieve that?
  • What do I need to learn in order to do that?
  • What is the best way to learn this?
  • Is there any reason I can’t learn this by action and reflection?
  • Will I learn more by teaching myself than by having anyone else teach me?

This is nothing new. Experience has long been touted as the best teacher, and I’m not here to say anything different. What I’m suggesting is that when fear strikes, and you begin to doubt your ability to do this on your own; fight doubt with doubt. Doubt your reasoning up until now and instead break down the problem you’re confronted with. Engage your brain and figure out solutions for yourself. Because it’s going to force you to come to the conclusion you’re desperately trying to avoid:

That you need to take action. You need to try.

Instead of reading how-to guides, your attempt to write a book becomes a process that evolves as you write the book. Instead of going to seminars and taking lessons on entrepreneurship, you start building a useful product that you can either pitch to investors or start selling. Instead of reading blogs on the internet on how to have good relationships, you go outside and start talking to girls, getting rejected and learning from it.

Because in doing so, you don’t learn someone else’s way, you learn your way. And that’s something nobody else knows and nobody else can teach, and the world has never seen before.

STOP LOOKING FOR SUCCESS IN ALL THE WRONG PLACES

I imagine that after killing Sasaki, the greatest rival of his age, Musashi looked upon his dying opponent and wondered why it was that instead of feeling happiness, he felt only sadness. He was finally the greatest fighter of his age, but instead of feeling joy, he felt only the sadness that he had killed this warrior for no reason at all.

It’s been noted that this was the moment Musashi refused to kill in duels ever again but I would imagine it was also the genesis of what he came to express later in life:

“There is nothing outside of yourself that can ever enable you to get better, stronger, richer, quicker, or smarter. Everything is within. Everything exists. Seek nothing outside yourself.”

Everything is within. Seek nothing outside yourself.

A product of his age and ambition, Musashi was a killer, but he was not a psychopath. He came to realize that despite achieving what he’d wanted to achieve, it did not bring him anything he wanted, it only came with the cost of a great man’s life. Something he ultimately did not want.

Although a dramatic example, it taught him the example he needed; we cannot find what we want outside of ourselves without first finding it inside. For him, this was satisfaction that came from dueling, but for yourself, it might be a sense of importance from fame, a sense a manliness from having a lot of sex, a sense of superiority through becoming successful – all of this isn’t going to work. You’ll just end up like Musashi, wondering where the feeling you thought you’d have has gone. If you don’t already have it internally, you’ll never find it.

You have to change how you feel inside. Nothing else will work.

I believe this is why a lot of guys I know continually find themselves chasing women. They believe that aside from the satisfaction of getting laid, they’ll feel a sense of internal fulfillment; but when they do finally get laid, they never feel this sense of fulfillment, and instead of questioning this, they simply chase the next girl hoping she will be the one do it for them. They crave more, thinking that will solve their problem rather than confronting the problem itself.

I see this with sex, money, success; any form of material ambition that once achieved doesn’t live up to what we think it would. We either reevaluate or we chase more.

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the same people who chase more, only to feel nothing, often end up spouting nihilistic beliefs. They looked for meaning outside of themselves. And as Musashi says “there is nothing outside yourself.” When you’ve lived a life finding nothing, you start beginning to believe life is meaningless.

This perspective is often the most challenging to take on because it directly confronts our ego. But ultimately that is the choice. We have to let it go, or let it win. We have to keep feeding it externally, or instead look internally, and find what we were always searching for in the first place.

THE COMPOUNDING OF SHITTY LIFE CHOICES ™

One of the most harmless ways to ruin your life is to waste your time on pointless crap. At the time, it might seem like you’re enjoying yourself, but as these small moments of waste pile up and compound on each other, suddenly it’s 5 years later, and you’ve spent nearly a quarter of your life staring at a smartphone. It’s moments like this that make people wonder where their youth went, and why they can’t seem to achieve their dreams, or even worse, never did at all.

Aristotle said that “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.” The way we use our time then determines the person that we are. And when we use our time poorly, this poor use of time compounds and grows until years have passed and we are no longer a person we ever wanted to be.

Queue the panic attack and mid-life crisis.

I call this the Compounding of Shitty Life Choices™ and it’s acting on you every day. It’s acting on you right now. Each time you take an action which is poorly chosen, worthless or completely negative, this adds to the pile of shitty actions you’ve already taken, stored away in your life like a bank vault of fuckups. And like a bank, you get interested on this in the form of the resulting poor self-esteem.

And the more you add, the more it grows; and the more it grows, the more you hate yourself.

This brings me to two quotes I’ve always liked by Musashi:

“Do nothing which is of no use.” And “Today is a victory over yourself of yesterday.”

The first is probably my favorite, exceptionally brutal qualifier on how we spend our time. Once it’s in your brain, it sticks like a virus and questions “is this useful?”, and then if it isn’t “why are you doing this? What could you be doing instead?”

When we orientate our lives into useful activity, our choices compound into massive results that are massively useful; like a book, a business, or a good relationship. When we orientate our behavior into useful activity, we actively medicate ourselves against the ever building effects of the Compounding of Shitty Life Choices™.

When we get all stuffy and bogged down with crap, all it takes is one useful decision to start setting it right. And when we start building the habit of doing that every day, we’re not just setting our days right, we’re setting our lives right.

This is not to say that things like playing video games and watching youtube videos are something you should never do. Fun is useful after all, it just comes down to moderating excess, knowing whether your actions are truly making you happy,  and being conscious of how you are spending your time. If all of your actions are like water that spills into either one of two cups, a good choices cup, and a bad choices cup, make sure the majority of your actions flow into the former, so that at the end of the day, it’s as close to the brim as you could get it.

Try it and see if you aren’t satisfied.

Musashi’s second quote is a useful reminder and antidote to the ever-present and ever negative berating of self-esteem.

“Today is a victory over yourself of yesterday.”

It’s easy when we’ve consistently failed to develop ourselves to get caught in patterns of negative self-talk where we endlessly reinforce an idea of who we are (usually, that we suck), telling ourselves that we cannot achieve what we want to achieve because not only have we failed but that we are a failure.

Sometimes, the argument can seem pretty convincing.

But just because you’ve failed in the past doesn’t mean you are a failure, it just means you need to do something different today. You need to take a different action to the one that resulted in failure. You need to start the day anew and try something new. And then you need to do that tomorrow. And the day after that. And the day after that, until finally, you are that ‘something new.’

Don’t get hung up on the past. Defeat the past.

 

*In Japanese, the last name is typically said first, so the correct way to say his name would be Miyamoto Musashi, although, as I’m writing in English I felt it better to stick to English conventions. The same can be said for Sasaki Kojiro.

 

Liked this article? Help me make an impact, and share it on social media. Just click one of the icons at the bottom or top of the page. Thanks!

And make sure to subscribe to never miss a post, or alternatively, like me on Facebook, so you’re always up to date on the latest content.

If there’s anything in this article you want to go in more depth on, or you just want to get in touch – drop me a message here! It’s completely free.

 

WANT A BETTER DATING LIFE?

Yeah, I know. You’ve read enough. But this is important. I made a dating course. Like, a really big dating course.

It’s over 8 hours of video content, 30 lessons, and over 80 exercises. It covers everything you need to know from making yourself more attractive, building sexual confidence, having great dates, and finding the right women for you.

It’s based on years of experience, a library’s worth of scientific research, and just the right amount of common sense. So stop listening to me and check it out for yourself.

CLICK ME!

Share this:

  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Pocket (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Tumblr (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Pinterest (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on WhatsApp (Opens in new window)
  • Click to email this to a friend (Opens in new window)

Filed Under: Archives, Best Articles, Dating Advice For Men, Life Advice & Personal Development Tagged With: Achievement, Anxiety, Approaching, Attraction, Certainty, Charisma, Comfort zone, Courage, Death, Emotions, Fear, Finding Our Passion, Game, Goals, Hard work, Identity, Life, Life Direction, Life Experience, Life Purpose, Neediness, Passion, Personal Development, Positive Beliefs, Process, Procrastination, Psychology, Relationships, Self Help, Self Improvement, Social Skills, Success, Women

The Art of Unbreakable Focus – The Last Guide on Focus You’ll Ever Need

by Visko Matich · Jul 1, 2017

YOU CAN ALMOST IMAGINE his wife’s dismay, when, upon hearing that her husband had lost his job as an oil executive, that he was now to embark on a career in writing. This is hard enough to stomach on its own, but in the Great Depression of 1933, this must have seemed like a stroke of madness.

Raymond Chandler was 44 years old when he came home with this announcement. Having nursed literary ambition at a young age, Chandler forsook his calling to instead amble through various careers, ranging from a stint in the admiralty, a venture stringing tennis rackets and even the military. Nothing stuck. His desire to be a writer never left him, but when hearing of the suicide of author Richard Barnham Middleton, he realized that if a man with ‘more talent than himself’ couldn’t make it, what chance did he have?

Finding his feet as an auditor, Chandler rose through the ranks of the Dabney Oil Syndicate to become Vice President, but his erratic behavior (heavy drinking, womanizing with female employees, and deciding not to show up) eventually became too much for his employees and they fired him.

So, left jobless and in the worst economic turmoil yet faced in history, Chandler decided to have a crack a writing.

Dying twenty-one years later, drunk and alone, Chandler left behind a long and impressive career as arguably the greatest writer of pulp stories that there ever was. Eschewing typical formulas that relied on the final twist, Chandler’s stories gripped from scene to scene and sent him from waiting in the bread line to selling movie scripts to Hollywood executives.

Although he’d lived a troubled life, Chandler had by all accounts achieved his dream. He had become a writer. What is usually considered a goal to be started early in life, Chandler started towards middle age, in a time of desperation.

When asked how he did it, his reply was a simple one. He sat himself down in a room and gave himself two choices.

“Write. Or do nothing.”

And in doing so, he mastered focus.

FOCUS

No matter how hard I try, I can never seem to focus. My mind, far more concerned with its own interests, can never be directed into a particular direction of my choosing. In the past, I would often mistake this for procrastination; and chastise myself for my lack of will, or challenge myself as to what it was I was afraid of that made me avoid my work. But the reality was often much simple.

I just couldn’t focus.

Where other people could knuckle down, I couldn’t.

I remember, when pressed to revise for an imminent exam on Ancient Greece, I instead gained a newfound interest in doing streaks of 3-pointers off the back of a trampoline. When in need of writing a CV for my first job, I instead decided it was more pressing that I teach myself HTML; and when I had coursework due that would fundamentally alter my options available to me moving forward, it just seemed more practical that I master the accuracy and finesse of my web-swinging on Spider-Man 2.

Although, I suppose all those examples indicate an element of choice. In reality, they just sort of happened. Rather than focus on what I needed to, my mind started focusing on something else.

A lot of the writing on focus would suggest that I was lacking in willpower, shy on discipline, and my work ethic wasn’t good enough. Other opinions might suggest I just didn’t want whatever I was supposed to be doing enough. But on close scrutiny, I was always applying a lot of willpower, discipline and work ethic to what I was doing, it may have been on the wrong thing, but to charge those diminished faculties as the cause seems to miss the mark.

And this always seems to be the case.

The people who find it extraordinarily difficult to focus on what they need to be doing, rather than being lazy, lacking in will, and ill-disciplined, are often willful, disciplined and hard working on whatever it is they’re doing instead.

But they still can’t focus on what the need to focus on.

In attempting to find some kind of solution to the problem of focus, it became apparent that a lot of the opinions on it stemmed from internal choice. That the individual, on some level, was choosing to not focus on their work, and instead choosing to fail. Alongside this, it was posited that focus was a deliberate, channeled used of energy and that people that lacked focus simply failed to channel that energy.

In every instance, the person who couldn’t focus came off as weak.

But if that was the case, then why the hell could so many of them demonstrate willfulness, discipline, and work ethic? Why was it these traits failed to evade them, but focus always did? What made focus so fucking hard to understand?

CHANNELS OF FOCUS

When looking at Chandler’s story, it becomes obvious that he was a bit of a mess. Lacking direction for most of his life, Chandler juggled a variety of careers and nursed dozens of bad habits. By any accounts, this was a man who was not gifted with direction, purpose or focus.

Yet when we look at the results of man’s life, it’s clear he was quite the opposite. He was focused.

When we look at focus it’s easy for us to overestimate the reasons for which focus occurs. It’s presumed that focus is the result of strength of will, and that inability to focus is down to a weakness in that will. But not only does this definition stink of macho dick measuring, it’s also not very practical. Minds wander, and when they’re given options, they wander into whatever channels there are available to them. Rather than being a product of willpower, focus is a product of environment. When we give ourselves channels for our focus to run down, we give ourselves less chance of focusing.

And when we do lose focus, we spend all our willpower trying to bend it back.

And we lose energy.

And we give up.

If you’ve been in this situation then I think you will, like me, recognize that this sucks. It’s a self-fulfilling pattern of procrastination and distraction – and rather than being a measure of our own weakness, is rather a measure of our poor planning.

Focus has less to say about us and more to say about what’s around us.

When Chandler sat in his room and gave himself the choice of “Write. Or do nothing” he gave himself the power to turn his focus to where it needed to go. He could sit there in silence, sure. He could twiddle his thumbs. He could stare at the wall, the roof, the floor. But he couldn’t leave, and he couldn’t do anything else. His focus only had one way to go. And it was writing or boredom.

His life’s work shows which one won out.

Chandler is a model for an effective understanding of focus. Rather than being bogged down in techniques and draining force of will, Chandler simplified focus down it’s basest element. 

Choice.

When asked about the definition of focus, Steve Jobs said it was “saying no” to everything else. Like Chandler, Jobs understood when that focus would go wherever it could, and that controlling those channels was more important than forcing your focus into one channel of many or spreading it too thinly between multiple.

When we, as Chandler did, utilize our choice to sit for an allotted time, and do our work, or do nothing at all, what we do is create an environment where focus is a natural by-product of our actions and our environment. Rather than chasing focus as a goal, we create focus as an outcome. Rather than forcing our focus towards our work, we give ourselves no option but to become focused on our work.

And that is the true nature of focus.

 

Liked this article? Help me make an impact and share it on social media. Just click one of the icons at the bottom or top of the page. Thanks!

And make sure to subscribe to never miss a post, or alternatively, like me on Facebook, so you’re always up to date on the latest content.

If there’s anything in this article you want to go in more depth on or you just want to get in touch – drop me a message here! It’s completely free.

WANT A BETTER DATING LIFE?

Yeah, I know. You’ve read enough. But this is important. I made a dating course. Like, a really big dating course.

It’s over 8 hours of video content, 30 lessons, and over 80 exercises. It covers everything you need to know from making yourself more attractive, building sexual confidence, having great dates, and finding the right women for you.

It’s based on years of experience, a library’s worth of scientific research, and just the right amount of common sense. So stop listening to me and check it out for yourself.

CLICK ME!

Share this:

  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Pocket (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Tumblr (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Pinterest (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on WhatsApp (Opens in new window)
  • Click to email this to a friend (Opens in new window)

Filed Under: Archives, Best Articles, Life Advice & Personal Development Tagged With: Achievement, Anxiety, Finding Our Passion, Focus, Goals, Hard work, Life Purpose, Personal Development, Process, Procrastination, Psychology, Purpose, Self Help, Self Improvement, Success

The Essential Demands Of Achievement – The Elements That Create Success In Any Goal

by Visko Matich · Jun 4, 2017

THERE ARE inherent demands that exist within any goal your pursue. These demands, in varying degrees, affect the odds of which you will:

  1. Achieve your goal
  2. Achieve your goal to a certain level or degree.

The difference between the two is the difference between, say, being a professional basketball player and being Michael Jordan or Kobe Bryant. It’s the difference between being a professional writer, and being Leo Tolstoy or George Eliot.

These demands, so intrinsic to our goals, are often the part that we least enjoy, or like to overlook because we don’t enjoy them, or we don’t enjoy the Sisyphean-esque perspective they place on our ambitions – but these demands, that any goal has, are Sisyphean in their endless struggle because the more we engage with these demands, the greater our overall result will be.*

In my articles on the achievement of goals I have argued three principle things:

  1. In ‘The Do Nothing Paradox’ I argued that it is in moments of idleness that our brains find inspiration and innovation in the pursuit of our goals, and that hard work isn’t always the key.
  2. In ‘You Dreams Are Achieved In The Moments You Hate The Most’ I argued that 99% of any undertaking you pursue will be unenjoyable, but that suffering is intrinsic to the achievement of the goal itself.
  3. In ‘The 100-Hour Work Week’ I argued in favor of the merits of extreme hard work as an engine of massive change in one’s life, and something that should be actively combined with the merits of idleness.

Building upon these principles, I want to explore how the effects of understanding and actively engaging with the demands of a goal, and how that affects its achievement and the level to which it is achieved.

FALSE DEMANDS

Any task, when undertaken and achieves, carries a certain level of esteem that exists at the moment of completion. In writing, this could be publication. In sports, this could be going pro. In something like improving your dating life, this could be being perceived as being a ‘player.’

These levels of esteem can seem important to our goal, often going so far as to be the focus of our goal itself, and in this, can seem like an inseparable element from it. But this is far from the case. In any example of external esteem, it is only relevant insofar in that our goal is an externally validated goal.

For example, if our goal is to be a famous actor, we can only achieve this with esteem. However, if our goal is to be a great actor, then this goal is completely dependent on the demands of the acting craft itself, rather than the demand of public esteem.

This may seem like a trite point, but in my experience, this is far from the case. After all, who thinks more about publishing than the aspiring author? Who is more hung up on fame than the practicing actor? and who dreams more of a cheering crowd than a fledging sportsman?

The pursuit of esteem falls within the normal spectrum of behavior for anyone pursuing a goal, but it has no active effect on the achievement of that goal itself. A basketball player performing at Michael Jordan’s level is just as skilled as famous Michael Jordan playing for the Chicago Bulls, and the demands that got Michael Jordan to that level are the same for both, esteem or no esteem.

THE 4 DEMANDS OF ACHIEVEMENT

The true demands of any goal, whilst unique in their specificity to the goal itself, have general overlying themes that are present in any goal. I call these universal demands; and these universal demands, when met with strong work ethic and innovation, ultimately determine the achievement of your goal and the degree to which that goal is achieved.

1) The Demand of Criticism

In our self-esteem generation, it can seem like it’s counter productive to rip your efforts apart, and constantly look for flaws, but for our goals, this is one of the central and most important demands. To find our failures, even in our successes, and learn from them, means that we are constantly improving, constantly growing and never stagnating.

In writing, I am loathsome when it comes to rewriting and editing. I like to form an idea in my head that I believe is useful to people, and then I like to shit it out onto the page as soon as possible and publish soon after.

This – provided my ideas are useful – will, when combined with a solid work ethic, probably result in an audience of some form and a potential living from my writing. But if I were to take more time editing, and improve upon my writing as much as possible; working on the points where it was bad, and forcing myself to write in ways that I wasn’t comfortable and reliant, the strength of my writing (the very engine through which I engage with my audience) would increase, and my results would increase in kind.

In your own goal, this is no different. The degree to which you can criticize and learn where the improvement areas are in your own efforts compromise the degree to which you will be rewarded for your efforts in the first place.

Far from being a negative experience, this is, in fact, a confident approach to your work. Instead of being complacent in your ability, you are active telling yourself that you have it within you to always get better.

And that’s exactly what you do.

2) The Demand of Understanding

Comprising your goal are thousands of elements that affect the overall result of what you’re trying to achieve. In my article, The 100-Hour work week, I called these ‘You’re Fucked Without It’ factors, and 1% changes, that when totaled, add up to a massive increase in your overall performance.

In the pursuit of your goal, the true demands will exist within these factors and changes, but in a way that is unique to your goal. Finding them simply comes from a thorough understanding of what comprises your goal, and a strong and critical eye taken to your own efforts.

This is called not taking a half-hearted approach and is a natural off-shoot of criticism. It is utilizing understanding to discover where you can get better, so that every element of your goal is respected, and treated with equal importance so that you develop into someone who is highly skilled and specialized at achieving that goal.

This could be mastering character, plot, structure, and breadth of reading in writing; or it could be catch-passing, rucking, mauling, line-outs and sprinting in rugby. There are countless elements that can be improved, and where extreme criticism finds these improvements in your current performance, the elements that comprise your goal are found in a deep understanding of your goal itself.

Together, they provide a map for the improvements within your pursuit.

3) The Demand of Consistency

Work on your goal every day.

This demand, whilst obvious, and in need of no explanation, is often overlooked. In your goal, this will be showing up every day to work on it; but more importantly, it will be building the habit of showing up when you don’t want to. It will be forcing yourself to work when you’d rather be watching TV, when you need to sleep, when you’re tired, lazy, hungry, or most important of all, not feeling passionate or inspired. Because it is within the habit of showing up when you don’t want to that consistency becomes set in stone and progress becomes inevitable.

As a final word on this demand: taking a day off to collate your thoughts and give you mind room to breathe is still taking a day to work on your goal, as this step is a conscious effort to improve the mental environment in which your goal is pursued, and allow innovation to germinate.

4) The Demand of Innovation

Outside of the immediate area of your goal and current performance, there exist periphery factors that, whilst not directly related to your goal, if crossed over, can significantly improve your results.

In your dating life, this would be your own personal development and conversational ability. Whilst they have little bearing on your confidence at approaching women, they will significantly affect your results. In writing, this would be a varied life experience, as this experience gives you something to capture and share that adds value to the reader.

High-level athletes do this all the time. It’s not uncommon in modern international and club rugby to see players utilizing basketball style throws in order to keep the ball moving between the players in situations where a traditional rugby throw would be impossible. In older games, this kind of practice was not yet seen, as the innovation through basketball techniques had not yet been identified within the periphery.

This demand, whilst less important that the former demands, is the one that affects the degree to which you can add something new to your goal and separate yourself from the attempts that have been made before you.

The easiest way to satisfy this demand is to actually serve the specific demand of writing itself, which is to live a varied life with varied life experience. This kind of living naturally invites elements that are going to enhance whatever goal it is you are pursuing. If you’re adventurous and like to test yourself at improv comedy classes, that’s probably going to improve your dating life. If you’re naturally curious and like to attend ballet classes, that might just improve your posing routine at bodybuilding competitions.*

You don’t really know unless you throw yourself out there.

THE ULTIMATE DEMAND

With each demand, there is a single unifying principle that threads them all together and it is this:

You approach your goal with an open mind.

Instead of just seeing where you’re doing well, you’re looking to see where you can be better. Instead of assuming you know your goal well, you’re looking to further your knowledge of it to see what more you can learn. Instead of being closed off to the world and it’s potential, and open to the world and looking for the unexpected experiences it can offer you. Instead of viewing your goal as achieved only upon esteem, you view your goal as a continual progress of meeting its demands head on.

This openness towards your goal extends beyond its pursuit and into its inception itself. It is an attitude towards curiosity that naturally expands your life, but more importantly, naturally transforms your goal into something you may actually pursue.

After all, if you don’t close your mind and tell yourself you’ll fail, you might just actually try.

*Not accounting for terrible misfortune, like illness or bereavement.

*This is actually what Arnold Schwarzenegger did.

—

Liked this article? Help me make an impact, and share it on social media. Just click one of the icons at the bottom or top of the page. Thanks!

And make sure to subscribe to never miss a post, or alternatively, like me on Facebook, so you’re always up to date on the latest content.

If there’s anything in this article you want to go in more depth on, or you just want to get in touch – drop me a message here! It’s completely free.

WANT A BETTER DATING LIFE?

Yeah, I know. You’ve read enough. But this is important. I made a dating course. Like, a really big dating course.

It’s over 8 hours of video content, 30 lessons, and over 80 exercises. It covers everything you need to know from making yourself more attractive, building sexual confidence, having great dates, and finding the right women for you.

It’s based on years of experience, a library’s worth of scientific research, and just the right amount of common sense. So stop listening to me and check it out for yourself.

CLICK ME!

Share this:

  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Pocket (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Tumblr (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Pinterest (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on WhatsApp (Opens in new window)
  • Click to email this to a friend (Opens in new window)

Filed Under: Archives, Best Articles, Dating Advice For Men, Life Advice & Personal Development Tagged With: Achievement, Anxiety, Certainty, Comfort zone, Dating, Dreams, Goals, Hard work, Identity, Life, Life Direction, Life Experience, Personal Development, Positive Beliefs, Process, Procrastination, Self Help, Self Improvement, Social Skills, Success, Uncertainty

Next Page »

Copyright © 2021 · No Sidebar Pro on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in

  • TERMS AND CONDITIONS
  • PRIVACY POLICY
  • COOKIES POLICY
  • SUBSCRIBE
  • CONTACT
loading Cancel
Post was not sent - check your email addresses!
Email check failed, please try again
Sorry, your blog cannot share posts by email.