Go big or go home you often end up home. Go small and steady over a long period of time, and you often end up with something big.
Sustainable progress isn’t about being consistently great. It’s about being great at being consistent.
“In land of the quick fix it may seem radical, but to learn anything significant, to make any lasting change in yourself, you must be willing to spend most of your time on the plateau, to keep practicing even when it seems you are getting nowhere." —George Leonard
For most, the plateau is a form of purgatory. But to advance beyond the low-hanging fruit in any meaningful discipline—lifting weights, writing, running, meditation, training a dog, parenting, marriage; you name it—you must get comfortable spending time on the plateau.
Just like there is a richness that comes with trying something new, there is an equal richness that comes with getting deeper and deeper into something familiar.
The texture becomes more granular. The pursuit, whatever it is, becomes more a part of you, and you a part of it.
Yet sometimes stepping away makes sense.
Life is too short to punish yourself with activities and people you don't like. Grit is a great quality—until it gets in your way.
The paradox: people quit meaningful pursuits when they should hang on, and hang on when they should quit.
Mastery is wonderful and exhausting and energizing.
You stay on the path, you stay on the path, you stay on the path; until you know deep down inside it's time to get off.
Then you get off; transition to something new; take all your hard-earned wisdom with you; and go forward.
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How not to become an egotistical jerk—do something hard and real.
Doing something hard and real humbles you. You have to earn your successes. And you can't just deny, rationalize, or talk your failures away.
When the bar drops, it drops. When the table collapses, it collapses.
It becomes quite unlikely that you'll get out of touch or full of yourself when you are working on something that is challenging and concrete, when your successes are earned and your failures cannot be rationalized or defended with corporate mumbo-jumbo or social media hot takes.
My most humble executive coaching client is also an avid woodworker.
When you are building tables in your basement you are going to get humbled over and over again. Tables either stand or they don’t. You can’t use power or money or relevance or fame to make a shoddy table stand.
Everything benefits from paying close attention. Paying close attention is the foundation to doing good—and by doing good repeatedly, you start being good—in all aspects of life.
(Thread.)
Current ethos works against paying close attention:
-Quick fixes or "hacks" for everything.
-Hot takes on all subject matter, from murder to politics to Royal Family of England.
Happens most on social media but sadly, it's becoming increasingly common in major publications too.
We are, as the cultural critic Neil Postman first wrote in 1985, "amusing ourselves to death."
Makes you wonder: perhaps one reason that so many people are unhappy—and so many organizations, communities, and entire societies the same—is the degradation of paying close attention.
This is about as good and honest of an essay as you'll read on navigating the emotional swings, self-judgement, hope, despair, and ruts of the pandemic.
"You don’t need to feel good to get going. You need to get going to give yourself a chance to feel good."
This insight—the basis of acceptance and commitment therapy—changed my life.
It is so counter to the cult of positive thinking and wellness. But it's what actually works.
The stuff Lindsay writes about—judging herself for feeling good some days and then judging herself for not feeling good on other days—is a common refrain during COVID-19.
This pandemic has been challenging for so many people in so many ways. EVERYONE is going through something.
A psychological trait that motivates you to respond to stressful circumstances in ways that produce resiliency.
A key to cultivating the existential courage that facilitates the ongoing search for meaning in life.
Here are three ways to develop it 👇👇
Commitment.
Accept situation you are in and move forward anyway. Resist temptation to turn away from obstacles; lean into them instead.
Research: "Rather than sink into isolation and alienation, do hard work of staying involved with the people and events going on around you."
Control.
Figure out what you can do to productively influence a situation, and then take action.
Research: “Struggling to have an influence on the outcomes going on around you, even if this may seem difficult in certain circumstances, is key to hardiness.”