Oftentimes, taking care of others looks a lot like taking care of yourself.
Helping busy people do inner work.
Oftentimes, taking care of others looks a lot like taking care of yourself.
You either win or you lose.
—Eh, we can do better…
You either win or you learn.
—Better. But, not as good as it could be…
You either learn or you don’t learn.
—That feels pretty solid.
Because if you don’t learn when you win you’re doing it wrong.
And learning from failures is talked about so much it’s essentially cliché at this point.
It’s worth remembering that what’s required to maximally squeeze the sweet learning juice from every experience isn’t what’s natural. Reacting emotionally to wins and losses is what’s natural.
Wins lead to celebration parties and losses lead to pity parties—and both tend to distract us from our work (and its improvement).
If maximally learning from every experience is important to us then we need to consistently prioritize a dedicated chunk of time to “juicing” each one.
Time when we can carefully reflect on what went well, what we could’ve done better, and how we can promptly implement our learnings into our lives.
Because the reality is this: experience is not the best teacher—learned from experience is.
If you’re winning and losing and not learning—you’re losing.
If you’re learning and learning and not letting winning and losing discourage or distract you from continuing to try—you’re winning.
Experiences are investments.
Don’t put them in the same category as material purchases.
Material items (that aren’t investments) should be purchased scarcely and with heed—for they often weigh us down and limit our ability to invest.
Experiential investments should be made generously and often—for they become the very foundation of the story of our lives.
What might feel like “stuck” might actually be cocooning.
Take this time of stillness as a disguised opportunity to accelerate your evolution.
Eventually, “stuck” will no longer be able to hold you in place.
Become “unstuck” by outgrowing your current situation.
Eliminate all distractions and just sit.
No screens. No audio. No people.
Just sit and soak in the world.
You’d be amazed at how different 30 minutes feels.
“Deciding to stop eating sweets and to start eating vegetables are separate psychological functions. The first takes self-control. The second takes self-discipline. You can easily succeed at one and fail at the other. They aren’t the same process!”
Dr. Julia-Marie O’Brien
Self-discipline says “Go,” even when you don’t want to—to do what you know you have to.
Self-control says “No,” even when you might want to say “Yes”—to stop you from doing something you know you shouldn’t.
In the same way self-discipline is built by breaking down seemingly large tasks into manageable chunks (to make “going” easier)—self-control is built by preemptively mitigating temptations before they turn into uncontrollably large ones (to make saying “No” easier).
If improving self-discipline follows a big to small format:
Then improving self-control might follow a small to big format:
While these two words might seem interchangeable, this key difference in these psychological processes should be understood if we hope to improve upon them.