Not to assume it’s impossible because you find it hard. But to recognize that if it’s humanly possible, you can do it too.
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 6.19. Gregory Hays translation.
It worked for you, so it will work for me.
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Author: Reality Laughs
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In rehearsal again
I am talking to myself. This time, it is really truly a rehearsal. I am reciting a speech in my head that I will never give to make myself look like a saint to an audience that doesn’t exist.
Stop it. This gets you nowhere.
I know, but my mind goes back there, by itself.
When you find yourself there again, just talk to God about it. Use the same internal verbalizing that you’re using to speak to your imaginary audience. It works for them, it will work for talking to God.
You talk today to the imaginary future audience so your ego feels big today. Or you reduce today’s fear of the future that might never come.
Yes, the speech assumes I moved to a new place to live and I’m giving a talk there, hoping to that people will like me. The likelihood of a move is remote but maybe I am afraid of being alone, or something like that.
Just so. If you are rehearsing today because you are afraid today of a future event, talk to God the same way you talk to yourself.
The future rarely happens the way you imagine it will. Talking to God will bring you back to now. you are always afraid now. Talking to God now will transform fear now. Let the future event happen or not. Probably it won’t, in reality.
And while you’re at it, do some menial task, like wiping down the kitchen counters or unloading the dishwasher. Talk to God and do something small that makes you feel good? That’s a recipe for success.
Yes, I wiped down the table. It had crumbs all over it. That felt good.
(NB: From the Observer. The Kingdom of God is within, as everyone from Jesus to Tim Grover has reminded you. You already know the answer. It’s just a matter of doing what you know you have to do. This episode just proved it, again.)
Hah. The Observer made an appearance! It’s turtles all the way up.
What do you do when you are puzzled and aimless at the start of the day? Mild discomfort and an overwhelmed feeling are when your state of mind feels like.
Right now it’s because there are many obvious things to be done and I don’t want to do them. That’s pretty much the barometer: internal discomfort means I’m avoiding something that needs to be done.
It’s important to take action in situations like this. I’m going to start with fulfilling a promise for action I have made (and broken) for the last two days.
Here I go. (That’s me coaching myself into action.)
Lessons learned, relearned, and rerelearned:
- Be careful about your commitments because you take them seriously and feel bad if you don’t do them. Make fewer commitments.
- As soon as you see commitment backlog (and the sadness that comes with it) stop. Take an action, any action to fulfill a commitment, any commitment.
- Revel in the feeling of completing a task.
- Do another one.
- Sooner or later you will reach the commitment that is really bothering you, and you will do it.
Reality is created by commitments made. Unfulfilled commitments hurt my soul. I make too many commitments to myself and others.
Let’s do “no” for today. Anyone asks me anything that I can’t do in one minute? The answer is “sorry, no”. No reason needed, just no.
What I did to feel better today
Here’s what I did today, after waking and feeling . . . feelings.
- Write this post.
- Tackled low-hanging fruit. Specifically I walked to Starbucks and bought two pounds of coffee. One ground for French press, one whole bean. Commitment fulfilled. Whew.
- Came home, put away the coffee completely, and cleaned up the coffee-making debris (French press, etc.) and while I was at it I rinsed all of the other dishes in the sink, ready to load in the dishwasher. Principle in action: clean up as you go, bring things to a natural stopping point as you go.
- Reconfigured the Starbucks app because it wouldn’t let me buy coffee. Needed a password which wasn’t in LastPass. Saved to LastPass so next time I’m in good shape. Principle in action: fix broken things thoroughly as you come across them.
- Start the rereading of Relentless, this time with underlining and notes in the margin and all that. Did the preface and wrote down the key takeaways. Principle: get the head right while getting the action machine rolling.
- Wrote down some notes about the preface of Relentless. Principle: make it yours by writing it down.
- Into action on a business project that is urgent. Now we are getting to root causes. If I can get this one to a point of rest, it takes the pressure of the commitment off. Someone else picks up the baton. Principle: I used momentum from tackling little problems to get to one of the big problems.
- Sidetracked by my brain – a technical fix to a website needs to be replicated on another. Send email to tech support to make this happen.
- Back to the work project.
- Lunch break. Look at YouTube while eating. (Ahrefs tutorials).
- Lie down after lunch and relax quite a while.
- Family and dinner. It’s a weekend.
- Finish the email and send it after dinner. File everything completely.
- Assign some tasks out to other people to do.
That took a bit of pressure off. Tomorrow will include a big chunk of family time. Be sure to remember that this is your number one priority, above business tasks.
All in all, it was a day.
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Relentless, by Tim Grover (Preface)
Notes from my second reading of Relentless: From Good to Great to Unstoppable, by Tim S. Grover.
These are my notes and thoughts after reading the preface, which is titled “A Note from Tim Grover.”
A Note from Tim Grover
Core message of the book: regardless of accomplishment, the mentality is “I’m going to come back even better. I’m not satisfied.” Page xvii.
He explicitly is not telling me what to do, what actions to take in order to accomplish my goals.
Why should anyone want to be told what to do? The whole point of this book is that in order to be successful, to truly have what you want in your life, you must stop waiting to be told what to do and how to do it. Your goals, your decisions, your commitment. If you can’t see the end result, how can anyone else see it for you?
Relentless, by Tim Grover, page xvii. Emphasis added.
The succinct marching orders:
Tell yourself what to do, and stop waiting for others to lay it all out.
Relentless, by Tim Grover, page xviii.
Comment. Life is infinite and the paths are infinite. There are patterns but choosing among the variations within the patterns is up to me.
Remember: I started down this career path saying “I will work out of my head and my phone, in X.” (X being my niche business target, picked at semi-random from slight exposure to it.) That was my explicit goal and there was no checklist for getting there. In fact, the business model was and still is quite the opposite: overhead-laden, paper-heavy, risk-averse, etc.
I picked up clues and did trial/error to get where I am now. And my goal is the horizon, always out of reach. How far I have come, and how far I can go! There is no “I got there.”
I have been a big planner, checklist guy. That’s useful in many situations. Not all. My strength is marching toward the horizon and never stopping.
Reminder to self: the action steps have become visible when you have been in motion. The actionable suggestions have come from people around you, as you have been visibly in motion. Go. Just go. And adjust as you go, always aiming for the horizon.
Notes from my second reading.
“You already know what you have to do, and you know how to do it. What’s stopping you?”
About thinking outside the box: “There is no box.”
“If you want to be unstoppable, you have to face who you really are and make it work for you, not against you. Truly relentless people—the Cleaners—are Predators, with dark sides that refuse to be good. And whether you know it or not, you do have a dark side. Use it well and it can be your greatest gift.” Emphasis added.
Comments. This is an introductory chapter, so not a lot of meat is found here. Hints of the inner power (the dark side, he calls it, driven by animal instinct.
I like the emphasis on knowing who you are and making it work for you.
Remember to keep you the reading and writing and talking about the right topics. Don’t coast when things get easier.
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After 10,001 Posts
I will be a better writer.
Let’s do this.
Fallen away. Time to start again today.
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Good day
Slept reasonably well, did the usual morning routine. (Seneca was a bit hard to follow, so maybe that means finding another version. Or maybe it’s just my head. Or where I am in the book.)
The family is happy. I am, to use the Words of Today’s World, in the moment. Massive tasks ahead yet I am calm.
Maybe struggling through Seneca helped. I keep in mind his life story and marvel. Up to now I have been mostly a Marcus Aurelius fanboy but Seneca’s work is growing on me. It’s my second reading of Letters, not counting random dives into the book from time to time.
I am writing this to remind myself, next time I’m in hell, that I have not always been in hell and there is a path out of hell. It is a fast path.
I’m talking about Tim Grover’s Relentless. I finished it last night. Purchased because two people recommended it, I had to see for myself what they saw in it.
The message seems to be:
- Everyone (not just a few people) have what he calls the dark side. This is the inner you. This is the source you need to tap into, the place you need to be. It is the place of instinct. It is the place of true emotion.
- Only a very few people, however, live in their dark side. He doesn’t give numbers but maybe the usual 90/9/1 split is a start.
- The prodigious achievements of the few (he calls them Cleaners) come from a prodigious work ethic.
- Extreme hard work is necessary, but not sufficient. Willingness to work extremely hard, in fact, is the physical filter that separates the Cleaners from everyone else. They seek, relish the difficult path.
- There is a mental condition or state that the Cleaners live in, fueled by their dark side. The ability to maintain this physical state is the mental filter that separates the Cleaners from everyone else. And while in theory everyone can work physically hard, at least for a while, only a few can maintain this connection to their dark side over years and decades.
Relentless is an exhortation. That’s not a bad thing.
I will take a second read now to see what is there besides the exhortation. At 1/3 of the way through the book, I was electrified. By the end of the book I was puzzled.
Is every person capable of achieving Cleaner-level results? I think not. I think he is calling into action those who are Cleaners or incipient Cleaners. The others, he dismisses as not with his time. (I am more than fine with that unwillingness to waste time on doomed ventures.) “You, too, can achieve greatness.” “Nah, I’m going to watch Law & Order reruns again.”
How does someone who aspires to great achievement tap into and stay in his personal dark side? This is a topic the author explicitly disavows.
Is staying in the dark side self-destructive and destructive of others? Yes, it can be, says the author. This is not a good thing, given my history with a few self-detonations in it. Life is good now. Don’t fuck it up with ego-driven quests.
Overall, I wonder whether this book is modern mental cotton candy or whether it contains truth. Compared to another modern author (Taleb) Relentless is trivial.
But let’s see if I can pull out some important truths with a second read. I don’t need action steps. The answers to those questions (“What do I do next?”) come from within, and then from helpful people around you.
I want to know whether the author is just an exceptional person telling me how to pick the numbers he used the win the lottery. I want to know if Tim Grover is saying wet roads cause rain.
There is so much within me that resonates with his description of the Cleaner. I identify. That’s why it is important to reread this book. Either he is showing a portal to another world, or he has written a work that’s like a magazine quiz (“Do you have ADHD?” for instance) that everyone is guaranteed to get a score of 7/10? Basically astrology.
Actually I am wrong about practical guidelines. The book indeed has clues on exactly what you have to do in order to dominate. Example: Michael Jordan having an extremely regimented life from Labor Day onward, cutting out everything except the foundational work.
Edit: I am starting my second reading and making notes as I go along. Here are the related posts. The answer to the question (vapid or valuable?) will reveal itself as I go.