It is so simple but people are still looking for the “secret”.
Twenty more years went so far in my life.
I’ve been living a life with default mode — consuming pieces of information from others, from the internet.
It made me anxious, made me feel I am useless. Slipping through a whole bunch of time — struggling, thinking, talking, lying on the couch, yelling, burn out, and still DO NOTHING.
Inspiring stories are everywhere.
Inspiring means something, someone or some stories make you think then do something.
Most of the time, people including myself just feel inspiring then forget to take actions, apply learnings, ideas into our own game, our own life.
We all default to pursuing a better version of ourselves. Becoming better and better.
How? Start taking action.
So, let’s start with the small experiment.
On Experiment
I am the guy — Thinking ambitiously but with tiny action.
Every time I thought it’s time to change. Here are words in my head — I’m lazy, I just want to stay at home, do nothing, I feel tired easily, forget it, I can’t do it.
Changing is slowly add-up, small tweak, it takes time, it’s a continuous process.
How could we start changing?
Giving yourself a chance to start any short-time period of the experiment.
There was a time, I binge eating, whenever I feel stressed out, I eat randomly to comfort myself.
You know what they said — To destroy is easier than to create, to build.
Getting fat, more than 220 pounds is easy to predict until I can’t stand it anymore.
Time to change. I start a small experiment for only one to two months.
Small wins could build up confidence and it would expand to other areas of your life.
After that, I wrote emotionally, document this journey and lessons learned.
It resonates with people, mo matter friends I knew, or strangers on the internet. This experiment gives me a chance to see what’s possible.
On Consume vs. Create
Consuming inspiring information is great, but before that, I want to create more. I don’t know why, maybe creating is something wired into humans.
When talking about creating, I mean producing everything from you.
Not strict to any specific form.
It could be writing down your thoughts, emotions, ideas, write it then show it to your friend, to the world, or simply just write it down on paper, in your lovely notebook.
It could be recording yourself, your voice. Telling a joke, an inspiring story, or acting, publishing on the internet, putting it together as a video or podcast, whatever you want, or simply upload it, share it with friends without any editing.
It’s not about what medium you leverage, it’s about actually creating something.
In the past, in the morning, I usually scrolling the phone for no reason, consuming news or feeds on social media. Turns out, it makes me feel anxious or even worse, jealous.
Now, I want to live a life with more intention.
I want to take back attention. Focusing on myself.
Stop scrolling the phone. Start creating something, anything.Creating before Consuming.
On Goals vs. Systems
I read a book named “ How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big: Kind of the Story of My Life” written by Scott Adams.
It’s been six months now, I hit the gym, training every single day. Thanks to this book.
You know what’s really inspiring means? Like I said in the beginning, it makes you think then do something but most of the time, people just feel inspiring then do nothing.
This book obviously inspiring me.
I really excited to share one of the great insights from Scott Adams.
Please be careful reading on, because it would slowly change how you see things, ultimately might change your life.
It is powerful.
A goal is a specific objective that you either achieve or don’t sometime in the future. A system is something you do on a regular basis that increases your odds of happiness in the long run. If you do something every day, its a system. If you’re waiting to achieve it someday in the future, it’s a goal. If you achieve your goal, you celebrate and feel terrific, but only until you realize you just lost the thing that gave you purpose and direction. Your options are to feel empty and useless, perhaps enjoying the spoils of your success until they bore you, or set new goals and re-enter the cycle of permanent pre-success failure. All I’m suggesting is that thinking of goals and systems as very different concepts has power. Goal-oriented people exist in a state of continuous pre-success failure at best, and permanent failure at worst if things never work out. Systems people succeed every time they apply their systems, in the sense that they did what they intended to do. The goals people are fighting the feeling of discouragement at each turn. The systems people are feeling good every time they apply their system. That’s a big difference in terms of maintaining your personal energy in the right direction. — Scott Adams
What’s interesting happen to me personally is, I know we, people have different emotions every single day. My approach is not to be a robot or ditch the emotions entirely.
My approach is knowing emotions does exist, emotions would coming to me sometimes randomly, but it’s okay.
You probably feel more exhausted after working all day long than the other day, then you think, you don’t want to go to the gym or don’t want to do something at that time.
You know yourself better than anyone, you either sleep, wake up earlier, avoid working out after working all day long.
The point is to adjust your lifestyle to properly match the systems you intend to build is your own responsibility.
Keep complaining, making more and more excuses to make yourself feel better is totally wasting your time.
Photo by Kyle Johnson on Unsplash
On Perspective Shift
The most powerful things I observed, learn from the insight — “ Goals vs. Systems ” is more beyond it — Perspective shift.
I start seeing hit the gym as a routine, a habit, a default mode.
I start seeing building muscle is not just for growing it — It is a way to help me develop the ability to focus at the moment, an alternative way to meditate, a way to bring me more inner peace.
Once I actually change the perspective, I start focusing on different things, it accidentally becomes my own habit, a lifestyle.
As they said, a well-known adage,
Perception is reality. How we see something becomes our truth, which can sometimes be self-limiting.
Changing perspective is the most powerful thing in the world, it would ultimately change your life.
You want the secrets to life, to success?
Stop wasting time, you won’t find it out until you start living it.
