Month: July 2022

Debts of the soul are never cancelled. Payment may be deferred, but payment will be made.

Strive, daily, to pay those debts.

A thread from Visa gives a useful, actionable way to unfuck your life. And it is useful for any level of fucked-ness that your life happens to have. It is useful for any level of effort that you put into it.

Maybe things are so bad that you are metaphorically tumbling through space and can only manage to wiggle your toes. Start this method. It will compound. You will reverse your life’s entropy.

Remember—in good cheer—that entropy is ultimately inevitable and you will die. That’s the ayyyy/lmfao dichotomy that Visa looks at frequently. Life and contentment exists between Scylla and Charybdis.

Start with this question (it was in a graphic, so I’m typing it here):

My life is a wreck. How do start rebuilding it basically from scratch?

Here is the plan, in helpful steps. Followed, as always, with reassurance and exhortation.

Step 1 is you do an inventory. List out everything about your life. What are your possessions, relationships, behavior patterns, what is everything of consequence that comes to mind? What do you love? What do you hate? What torments you? List it all out. In writing. Look it over

https://twitter.com/visakanv/status/1551102360587407360?s=21&t=O61cBTzT1lR6MFDYFXW4oQ

2, you eliminate everything bad that you can eliminate from a first pass – throw out any junk/garbage from your home, workspace, unfollow news and celeb accounts from social media

3. double down on whatever good you can. Text friends you love, practice your fav thing for 5 mins

4. do another inventory. evaluate what’s changed, pay attention to how you feel. set out to do some self-reporting over ~30 days. What do you need to build up the courage to do? Quit current job? Find new job? Make a plan, break it down into baby steps, celebrate lil progress

5. read/follow @introspectvv I get into all of it in much more detail there 😎. but really it’s just all of the above. cultivate a sense of humor. celebrate lil frivolities and silliness. find lil ways to enjoy yourself today and also celebrate doing nice things for future you

you fail to stick to your plan that’s fine, shit happens, dust yourself off and try again. every failure is a teacher. It took me like 10+ attempts over 15 years to quit smoking. Every previous attempt was a failure but they all taught me things that helped me

also try to be at peace with “being a wreck”. everything is a wreck. existence is a great cosmic car crash. you don’t have to live your life anxiously fleeing the crime scene. you can learn to be ok with who you are, and amazingly that’ll help expand you into who you wanna become

recommendation I have that I seldom see other people make is to surround yourself with media that you love, that stirs your heart, that moves you to tears and makes you want to roar with life. to remind you what the point is

Beliefs might be correct (or not). They might be useful (or not).

Optimize for useful beliefs.

Useful beliefs help you win.

Useful IS correct.

Correct may or may not be useful.

Useful reveals correct.

What do you want? Go. Get it. Your beliefs will quickly reveal themselves to be useful (therefore correct) or not.

And when you have what you wanted, the correctness of the beliefs that got you there will be immaterial.

Except.

They will be the building blocks for your next adventure.

But not the beliefs—tested and proven by reality. Those are not the building blocks.

The ability to aim, to head straight for the prize, and to adjust your beliefs to whatever is needed to accomplish your goal.

That skill—learning while running the mountain path—is the true building block for your next adventure.

It’s a corollary to Graham’s Killhouse Rules.

If no one is coming to save you (rule 1) choose yourself.

There is a book by James Altucher with that title.

Seth Godin says Pick Yourself.

Or, you take the opposite approach, and fearlessly put it all out there. And own everything you say and do, and uncompromisingly attack forward with your vision, and let God sort the casualties out.

https://twitter.com/quintuscurtius/status/1548079395092328448?s=21&t=K5Tp3sIlk2w03zPdbcdk7g

Posted in reply to a cautious tweet suggesting a timid approach to life.

I decided where I’m going. The path is revealing itself: I’m working backwards from the destination.

I’m doing this by writing. And doing a shitty job at it, with happiness. Two prompts, and write two answers. That’s where I’m going and what I will be doing when I get there.

The two prompts: who are the customers? What am I doing for them? Right customer, right service. Everything follows from that.

The path won’t appear until you decide to be at the end of it.

Scott Adams.

Decide.

I’m done.

Done with reading insightful tweet threads. Blog posts. Newsletters.

Done with reading insightful books. Mindset this. Thinking Fast and Slow that. Enough.

Writing insightful (to the best of my ability) stuff.

Meditations, a pen, paper. That’s all I need. The Kingdom of God is within. And human help is all around me.

Let’s go win.

Who am I? Really. What is my edge? What are my limits? Observe. How do I behave? That tells me.

What do I want? Really. I already have the answer. It’s inside. Let it out, unashamedly.

Don’t make the map better with more insight. Go get after it, with the map I already have.

I just got bonked on the head with a reframe.

I have been viewing my business life as “providing value.” This is not a bad frame, and it is a common one. Price vs value. People buy value, pay price. Etc.

The reframe is to ask whether I am being useful to others. This moves me from the subjective universe (basing decisions on someone else’s subjective experience) to a more objective universe (basing decisions on whether there is a demonstrable utility to my action).

The person I am helping will still have a subjective experience. That’s out of my control and it is idiosyncratic to the particular person. Better: I can make my decisions based on being objectively useful to people and let the subjective chips fall where they may.

This will banish angst and uncertainty. My results and happiness in business (and life) are not dependent on someone else’s subjective experience. I just strive to be useful in whatever way I can.

How do you keep momentum?

“Strike while the iron is hot.”

But how do you keep the iron hot?