Hey there,
Here are 3 things I’ve learned and/or expanded on this week.
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Did The Worst Case Scenario Happen? Good
You should absolutely have the hope and intention of making the best case scenario occur pretty much all the time. BUT there are certainly going to be times when the worst thing you thought could happen ends up happening.
Most people will let their feelings and emotions take over and live in the bottom of that pit they fell into. Sometimes they’ll even begin to identify themselves through the lens of the shitty things that happen to them. Their attitude and actions will start to reflect it.
Here’s the thing: you really don’t have control over the things that happen to you. You really don’t have control of the outcomes in your life. You can do your best, control what you can, but in the end there are a TON of external factors that influence where you end up. Knowing this is super important.
Viktor Frankl wrote “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms – to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way”. You’re not purposefully trying to suffer, and Frankl never advised seeking out suffering in order to find meaning. But meaning can be found regardless of the degree of suffering you encounter.
What is truly controllable in any given circumstance, as shitty as it may be, is your attitude and your actions. You get to choose how you respond to the situation and you get to choose the next steps you’re going to take. Having this internal locus of control of your attitude and your actions, not your outcomes, is really what makes you come out on top in the end.
Here are 4 things you can try doing to get yourself closer to an actions over outcomes mindset.
- Be optimistically realistic with your expectations. When you take this approach to setting goals you can plan for things to not go perfectly.
- Use implementation intentions. If ____, then ____. Think about some of the things that can go wrong with your plan. When one of them inevitably occurs you’ll have a plan of action in place to deal with it.
- Practice gratitude. Think it, write it, say it out loud. It doesn’t matter. There’s always something you can be grateful for no matter how bad your day was.
- What would you say to a close friend or family member going through the same situation? This one is huge and it relates to positive self talk. Would you degrade and put down a close friend or family member going through a hard time? Probably not. So maybe stop doing it to yourself all the time.
Did the worst case scenario happen?
The best way to respond: good, now I get the opportunity to prove my resilience and ambition to myself.
Pivot Your Goals
Failure is almost always inevitable in any pursuit of success. Most people will respond to failure by giving up altogether. They’ll go through small spurts of motivation or inspiration every few months or years and get on track with a goal, but eventually they’ll fall off when they don’t get the desired result.
If you set proper goals then your ultimate outcome should be just at or above your current capabilities. This provides a challenge but really gives you a shot at success since it isn’t outrageously outside of your capabilities.
If you’ve read some of my content before you’ll know that I’m of the belief that you don’t really have control of your outcomes (see the above entry). This mindset shift, in and of itself, will really help you deal with not achieving your goals or not getting the outcomes you expected.
If you pursue something for the sake of the challenge and the pursuit itself, you’ll find much more satisfaction from the process and from life in general. At the same time you want to be successful and achieve the outcomes that you set out to achieve.
Say you fail to achieve a particular goal or you notice early on that you’re not on track to achieve your current goal.
Pivoting your goal will be an important next step in these contexts.
Before you begin the process of pivoting your goal, there are a few key things you should do and reflect on.
Revisit your why. Your “why” is the key driver of motivation to do the thing. Does your why align well with your current goal? Take some time to really think about and write down your why and your vision of your future self.
What went well the first time around? There’s always something positive to be taken from any situation, regardless of how shitty things went overall.
What didn’t go so well the first time around? And more importantly, what are the actions that you could have taken to make things go better or more smoothly. Even if there were external factors which totally derailed you, you are in control of your actions.
Once you’ve totally evaluated your goal and the process, you can move on to pivoting the goal and setting yourself up for success in the future.
Here are some ways that you can pivot your goals:
- Change the timeline of the goal. You might have been a little overzealous and unrealistic with the timeline. You decided that you wanted to lose 20 lbs in 4 weeks. Extending that timeline across say 12-16 weeks instead is probably a good idea.
- Change the outcome parameters of the goal. Instead of losing 20 lbs in 4 weeks you could try losing 8-10 lbs in 4 weeks.
- Change the goal altogether. Maybe you’ve been on and off dieting to try and lose weight for years (this is a lot of people). Maybe your goal right now needs to be weight maintenance whilst focusing on choosing healthy, whole foods in your diet. Once you’ve managed to habitually improve your eating habits you can pivot back to the weight loss goal.
- Change the methods of achieving the goal. Sticking to the weight loss goal. Let’s say you’ve focused on caloric expenditure, trying to get 15,000 steps per day and doing dedicated cardio 3-5x per week. You might be better off focusing more on lowering the calories you consume instead of increasing the calories you burn each day.
You may even find that you totally crushed it and achieved or even exceeded your goal. What’s next? A lot of people don’t know where to go from here and they end up going back to their old ways and habits. It is one of the factors for why maintenance of weight loss doesn’t stick around long term for most people. Doing this whole process, setting new or pivoting current goals, and pursuing them for the sake of the challenge will keep you progressing long-term.
“What Would You Tomorrow Want You Today To Do?”
A simple question to ask yourself when you’re faced with a difficult decision, or perhaps a decision that you often find yourself regretting later on.
I heard this quote first from Chris Willamson on his podcast Modern Wisdom (highly recommended!) and I’ve used it almost every day since.
Don’t get me wrong, I still make poor choices. I still make choices that later me wishes went in another direction. It’s not a fool proof method for making better decisions, but if you use it often enough at the right times, it can certainly be a game changer.
We often choose instant gratification over delayed gratification. We often choose to do the things that make us feel good in the moment over the things we know will make us feel good in the future. There certainly has to be a balance between the two. Most of the time, I think we should be prioritizing delayed gratification.
“What would you tomorrow want you today to do?”
It’s the ultimate stopping cue when you’re faced with a decision. It allows you to analyze which choice belongs in the instant gratification bucket and which one belongs in the delayed gratification bucket. From there, you can decide which is more of a priority.
Do this often enough and you’ll likely see significant improvements in your life satisfaction.
Peace friend,
Jamie
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