Welcome to Things I Wish I Knew Earlier Sunday!
Here are 3 ideas I found to spur your creativity this week.
Worrying in Advance for Futures that Never Come Doesn’t Help You Become Wealthier, Healthier, or Happier. It is just a Habituated Thought Loop.
At 25, one of my biggest fears was that I would never find a beautiful woman to marry me and build a family (so I would die alone as a loser that no one ever loved…that’s how the rest of the thought loop went).
At 33, I am married to a beautiful woman who plans to build a family (beyond our awesome puppy Nola) with me.
The future I was worried about at 25 did not ever become the present.
Why?
Because I intentionally took steps to move away from the future I was afraid of and toward the one I wanted.
We can do that, you know. We humans. We can take actions and make choices that take us away from futures we don’t want and move us toward futures we do want.
The truth is that 90% of worry comes from habituation.
You’re just used to being worried, so it’s actually more comfortable for you to stay on that thought loop of worry than to step off it and move on into the unknown.
I give you permission to step off it.
It isn’t making things better. You aren’t some kind of martyr. You are just making your own experience of life worse (and that is likely making other people around you have a worse experience, too).
Give yourself permission to step off the loop and let’s get moving along to other more important things.
My favorite quote on the topic is often attributed to Mark Twain:
“I have spent most of my life worrying about things that have never happened.”
If You Regularly Use Nicotine, You are Most Likely not Doing It by Choice. You are Supported by the Physical Addiction.
I decided to make the first month of 2024 Sober January, which meant, among other things, no nicotine.
I didn’t plan to quit nicotine or anything else. I was just going to take a break.
Four days in, I took on some flu-like symptoms. Terrible headache. Body aches. Waking up in cold sweats.
And I was very confused.
Sure, I had used nicotine here or there in various forms through the years.
But I wasn’t addicted.
I knew what I was doing. I had this thing under control.
After a week of feeling horrendous, I learned, with a little research, that what I was experiencing was classic nicotine withdrawal.
That was when I realized that I had been voluntarily, proactively poisoning myself for years.
And when I thought I was making the choice to partake under my own volition, I was really doing what the addiction wanted me to do.
So, I’ll never use nicotine again.
If you use nicotine and want to quit, take it from me. Ween yourself down by using less and less at larger and larger intervals. That’s better than cold turkey. And you can avoid the majority of withdrawal symptoms that way.
Also take this from me: you can quit and after a few weeks without it, you’ll be free.
The Best Short-Term Way to Create Long-Term Value (for Yourself and Others) is to Work on a Single Project until It is Completed.
This might be the best idea I have learned in the past year.
Don’t make big, grandiose plans.
Don’t wander around from this to that to the next thing.
Choose one singular project. Focus on that one project with all the effort and time you have until it is completely finished.
Then stop and look around. How has life changed? What do you understand now that you didn’t understand before? What new skills do you have?
At this point, it’s time to choose the next project and get to work.
A good example of this for me is building out cody.blog, my website.
Before beginning this project, I had never used WordPress and didn’t know a plugin from a landing page.
But I knew I wanted to own my website instead of renting it from companies like Squarespace and Clickfunnels.
And I knew I wanted to write articles that people could find online forever.
Plus, I knew that if I could add website design to my skill stack, then I could control a big part of my business that I had previously outsourced.
So, I built it. I don’t think it is as good as it can be, that’s for sure. And I don’t think it is world-class.
But it is as good as I can make it for now. And now I know all about how to build it.
And the best part is that I can iterate now. I can make it better. I can tweak it.
And I can also move on to the next project.
The skills you develop and the knowledge you earn are the the primary reasons for choosing any project.
Skills and knowledge compound over time. The more knowledge you have, the more you know. The more skills you have, the more you can do.
If you choose the right projects and you can complete them, then who knows how much value you can create for yourself and others long-term. The potential is unlimited.
Choose wisely.
And remember: If you don’t choose the projects you want to work on, then others will choose those projects for you.