Together with

Before we get into this newsletter issue, you might be interested in checking out today’s sponsor Bay Area Times!

Visual-based newsletter on business and tech

Bay Area Times is a visual-based newsletter on business and tech, with 250,000+ subscribers.

Sign up with one click.

Look around.

Everyone is stressed out of their minds.

We all want to achieve big things, but it is becoming infinitely more difficult to focus on those big things… so they never get done.

Our mind is flooded with:

• The risk of pursuing your own goals instead of the ones your parents (or friends, or partner, or boss) want for you.

• Being told what to care about – skills to learn, countries to support, foods to avoid – by people with goals that don’t align with your own.

• Thoughts about the job you have to show up to, how much time you are going to waste, and all of the things you won’t be able to do.

• What people will think if you decide to go your own way and take control of your life. What will they think?

These are not easy thoughts to deal with.

If your friends or parents don’t support you – or even try to stop you – that can become incredibly painful. You may lose people from your life. You may lose a part of your identity. That hurts.

The problem is that they don’t know what you know.

They haven’t been exposed to the same information, education, and potential, so they don’t see the opportunity.

Their mind is still programmed with beliefs that serve their outdated goals. It’s difficult for them to believe that your new endeavour will work out because all they know to be possible is what they’ve done.

Parents are very good at this.

They were assigned goals at birth. They pursued those goals and saw results. Their identity was shaped, and so was their mind.

If they don’t continue expanding their minds into adulthood, their minds harden. Things that don’t align with what they know don’t make sense, and people hate what they don’t understand.

This is the first realization you must make:

Nobody is going to give you permission to do what you want.

They weren’t exposed to the information you were.

They don’t have the story that you are telling yourself.

Unless they are developed enough to open their mind to that story, you have to jump out of the nest at some point and trust that you can learn to fly.

Even further, you only have so much focus you can invest in your goals each day.

It’s no wonder why people live in a constant state of stress.

We can’t focus.

We pay too much attention to the goals of others to the point of having zero attention left for our own.

As soon as we wake up, we grab our phones and flood our minds with news, advice, doomsday predictions, and people doing better than us. The only way to find relief is to keep scrolling to make ourselves feel like we are making progress.

The mind craves order. That’s why you feel terrible.

Your attention is not focused on a singular vision for the future so potent that distractions cannot penetrate it.

You only have one option.

Feel deep into your situation.

Realize where your life will end up if you keep going down this path.

Become absolutely fed up with the lack of progress you are making.

Use that negative energy to laser in on the meaningful goal you’ve been putting off… you know, the inner voice that keeps nagging at you.

• “You were meant for more than this.”

• “You have what it takes to be successful.”

• “You don’t have to end up like the rest.”

Seriously, feel into your situation. Stop avoiding it. You have to add to the gravity of what you want to achieve.

The pain of not achieving your goals must outweigh the pain of living a comfortable life.

You must remove the distractions numbing you from the pain of becoming who you were meant to be.

Discipline Comes From Clarity, Not Force

Most people don’t understand self-discipline.

It’s not something that’s supposed to be difficult.

It is the by-product of knowing what you want and accepting nothing less from yourself. It is the by-product of an ordered mind. That is, maintaining a clear vision for your future and filling clarity gaps with education and action.

The reason people struggle with self-discipline is because they get distracted from what matters.

• They forget who they want to become.

• They forget what they are capable of.

• They forget the impact they want to have.

You aren’t disciplined because you aren’t the person who would seamlessly achieve the goal they set out to achieve.

Someone whose true identity is a bodybuilder doesn’t have difficulty eating healthy and going to the gym. They just do it.

Someone whose true identity is a writer doesn’t have difficulty blocking out time for idea generation, long walks, and writing.

Someone whose true identity is a gamer doesn’t have difficulty trolling people online, having a doomer mindset, and ruining their health in front of a screen for 8-10 hours a day.

The bodybuilder would see that lifestyle as a living hell. It would be close to impossible for them to adopt the gamer lifestyle without going insane and hating their life. They would be brutally aware of the goals they aren’t achieving.

Each identity has its trade-offs. They each require sacrifices that allow them to achieve the goals they choose.

That leads us to our first step to becoming self-disciplined:

1) Removing Distractions

Ask yourself:

Do you know why you are doing what you are doing?

Have you asked yourself that question in the last month?

Why are you going to school? Working that job? Building that business? Doing that workout?

Was it your choice? Or was it a goal that was programmed into your head by your parents, friends, or culture?

Audit your life for goals you didn’t know you were pursuing.

Sit with a notebook and write down every single thing you are doing and why you are doing it.

If you don’t have a good answer, that is a distraction. You are wasting emotional energy on someone else’s dreams so you don’t have enough to pursue your own.

2) Life As A Game

I’ve been fascinated by the simple concept of anti-goals.

Anti-goals are not goals that you don’t want to achieve.

They are the sacrifices you are not willing to make to achieve a goal.

As an example, if I want to build a billion-dollar company, what am I not willing to sacrifice to get there?

Most people who have such lofty goals pay little regard to what they lose along the way: their health, their family, and their sanity.

On the other hand, I know it’s possible to build that billion-dollar company while being healthy, having good relationships, and maintaining my mental health.

Yes, it will take a lot more time and work, but what else is there to do? Let your life burn in front of you because you didn’t have the restraint or discipline to carry more than one responsibility?

That’s the beautiful thing about anti-goals. They turn life into a fun game.

They check many boxes for flow – the main characteristic that makes us addicted to video games.

• Challenge – A goal that is within reach and tests your skill.

• Skill – If your skill is too low for the challenge, you get anxious. If it is too high, you get bored, indicating that you need to choose a greater or lesser challenge rather than give up.

• Clarity – A hierarchy of greater to lesser goals makes it easier to start moving toward your vision for the future.

• Feedback – You know exactly when you are making progress and that feels good. You don’t feel trapped in a cycle of repetitive tasks that lead to nowhere.

• Rules – Rules or boundaries frame how you perceive the world. Your mind has more space to notice information that aids in the achievement of your goals.

When you turn your life into a game, you become obsessed with progress.

3) Reinventing Yourself

All change is behaviour change.

All behaviour change is identity change.

So, all change is identity change.

You are what you repeatedly do.

You are disciplined toward the goals that live in your head rent-free at this very moment.

You don’t find it difficult to lay in bed, watch Netflix, and play video games all day.

For many high-performers, that is the most difficult thing in the world. They can’t imagine doing that. The pain of not making progress toward the goals that make them who they are would eat them alive.

With that, your journey will be painful.

You are letting your old self die off.

You won’t want to shed the beliefs and habits that are holding you back.

That is step one. Awareness that difficulty is a good sign. A sign to keep going.

The second step is reprogramming your mind to operate toward new goals that create a new identity.

• Throw yourself into a new environment that aligns with who you want to become.

• Drown your mind in ideas, information, and education that expose you to new goals and ways to achieve those goals.

• View every situation through the perspective of your ideal lifestyle and make decisions accordingly.

Throw yourself into the deep end and teach yourself to swim.

Most people won’t take that leap out of fear.