You Are More Powerful Than You Know and
You lot're More Powerful Than You Think
Originally published by Stephen Guise on his personal website .
"If you want to be tougher mentally, it is simple: Be tougher. Don't meditate on it." These words of Jocko's helped one listener — a drug addict — become sober after many failed attempts. The simple logic struck a chord: "Being tougher" was, more than anything, a decision to exist tougher. It'due south possible to immediately "be tougher," starting with your next decision."
-Tim Ferriss and Jocko Willink in Tools of Titans
Imagine a superhero who tin fly, become invisible, and turn dirt into huckleberry pancakes. Amazing powers, correct? Simply what if this person never used their powers? What if they visibly walked on dirt instead of invisibly flying around eating pancakes?
Why would they choose to exercise that?
Well, we could ask ourselves the same question, because that person is yous and me. Okay, I admit we don't take those particular superpowers, just we do have enormous power to change the trajectory of our mood, day, and life. We don't always apply it because we forget about it and fall into old routines of passivity.
Passive Minds Can't Break Gratis
Stop thinking about what you've done wrong recently. Stop thinking most how y'all tin can't practise or improve your skills because you're also undisciplined. Stop thinking that you lot should exist in a better position than you currently are. Stop believing that you're stuck — in that location's a wide open lane to your left and you just have to determine to accept it.
Problem: a passive mind can't call back beyond what it has already experienced.
A passive mind won't consider new and exciting possibilities. A passive mind won't think virtually breaking its ain limiting rules. A passive mind tin can't abound and become greater, it can just wallow through and regurgitate its own by. That's considering passive minds don't create new things, they merely observe and annotate.
Nobody is immune to having a passive mind, and nobody is sentenced to carry it their whole lives. We all take the ability to overcome this life-sapping way of thinking.
Your Superpower: Selection
Cute scene, isn't information technology? Whatever time you see something desirable, whether information technology's a nice picture, a nice life, or a nice career, call back that you can choose to take steps to obtain it for yourself.
The superpower we all have is option. Even every bit you read that, you're probably underestimating it. Let me make it clearer.
You know that thing you lot've been struggling with? Yous know that huge frustration in your life that you can't seem to get over? You know that thing you're supposed be doing simply haven't been doing?
You can Choose to conquer it, and by doing so, y'all will.
Like the quote at the commencement of this article suggests, if you desire to be mentally tougher, decide to be mentally tougher. If you lot want to be able to exercise, decide to practise today. If yous don't want to procrastinate, decide to work. You're mentally and physically capable of doing all of these things, simply yous will struggle mightily if y'all let yourself "go with the menstruation" of your thoughts, circumstances, and feelings. You volition fail frequently if y'all surrender your ultimate power of choice to less meaningful factors.
How to Become a More Powerful Person
Those who remember passively believe they are weaker than they really are. With a pocket-size shift in perspective, they can really accept control of their lives. I desire to nail down the difference in these perspectives, so I'grand going to give some thought examples. If the passive thinking examples resemble your thinking today, imagine how your behavior might change if you decided to recall like the powerful example.
- Passive thinking: I should exercise today, but I'thousand a lilliputian tired and, oh, maybe I should practise laundry. I should have done it yesterday. Are my new shoes coming in today?
- Powerful thinking: I will exercise today no matter what.
The Difference: Passive thinking is predictably unpredictable, distracted, more concerned with the past and future than right at present, and information technology'due south easily influenced past internal and external factors. Powerful thinking is elementary, clear, concise, and focused on making valuable decisions in the present moment, and it isn't influenced at all by external factors. The just internal factor that matters to a powerful thinker is their option, what they decide to practice.
- Passive thinking: Wow, I've been in such a oestrus lately. Ugh, I should be doing better than this. I just feel so drained, and now I'm in a bad mood, which makes me feel even worse. Uggghhhhhh. Why tin't my life be [amend, different, like his/hers, etc.]? What am I doing incorrect?
- Powerful thinking: That's non how I wanted to get-go the day, but what's done is done. I'm going to salvage the 24-hour interval (option). I'll work on the spreadsheets, meditate for 5 minutes, call James and Tim, then head to the gym (all deliberate choices).
The Difference: Passive thinking focuses on their feelings of shame, disappointment, and inadequacy. Information technology's weak on solutions and strong on excuses. Negative feelings will loop, because it feels bad to feel bad. Comparison is also common, to another person's life or to what they feel life should exist like. Powerful thinking, however, may acknowledge a slow or undesired recent past, but so the mind will quickly recognize that these events accept expired and are no longer worth thinking nearly. The powerful thinker will quickly begin making choices to shape their day into something they want.
Passive thinkers observe their life and comment on it. They're passengers.
Powerful thinkers actively shape their lifestyle by making house choices. They're drivers.
It's important to point out that this change goes beyond to taking action. As the initial quote states, your ability of selection can exist used to increase your mental toughness, be more courageous, and and then on. Many choices are erroneously labeled as emotions. Toughness is not defined by manlike emotionlessness, though it is often depicted in that way. Toughness is when you feel torn apart and cull to put yourself dorsum together. Toughness is when you experience hurt and weak and helpless and continue to fight regardless.
You lot don't always choose what happens to yous and the emotions you experience, but yous e'er choose your response to said events and emotions. Emotion is non the end of a sequence, it is the beginning. When you feel sorry, angry, lost, inadequate, and/or completely defeated, that'due south when the game begins. That's when you tin use your superpower of choice to create a new chapter in your story. But similar any good movie, negative beginnings gear up upward for sweeter catastrophe, as long as the protagonist keeps fighting for it.
Ask Yourself: What Exercise I Cull to Do Today?
Your answer should non contain if/merely conditionals. Information technology should be unambiguous and explicit. Examples:
- "I am going to [do XYZ] at [fourth dimension] at [place]."
- "I am going to do 50 button-ups sometime today at home."
- "I am going to bear witness up at the gym today after I digest my lunch."
- "I am going to write 173 words for my book at 4:23 PM."
- "I am going to brainstorm 15 business ideas in Microsoft Word before I become to slumber tonight."
As for me, I did get off to a slow first today, just y'all can bet the house that I'm going to dominate the rest of information technology. Why? Because I've made choices that I'm not leaving it up to estimation, circumstance, or gamble. They're every bit good as done, and it really does feel like a superpower if you lot've been a wishy-washy passive thinker in the past (equally I have).
Fourth dimension is Active, Opportunities Abound
One second just passed. And 2. And three…
Every new second is a brand new opportunity for you to brand a powerful choice to change the course of your day. Don't become hung up on missed opportunities — new ones are available in abundance. There are 86,400 seconds per mean solar day, meaning there are 86,400 opportunities per day for you to make a disquisitional, day-changing determination.
If you utilise your power of option every mean solar day, y'all tin can change the grade of your entire life. Cease leaving your life up to what you ate for breakfast and which manner the wind blows. Selection a direction, and don't allow anything stop you from going that manner.
- Yous Practice NOT take to do what you lot most feel like doing.
- You DO NOT accept to do what you lot've "come to expect from yourself."
- You Practise Non take to follow whatever precedents or rules.
- You DO Non have to listen to your internal objections.
- You DO Non have to care what society thinks of you lot and your choices.
- You Do Non have to look for a meliorate fourth dimension.
- You lot Practice NOT accept to stop poorly just considering you lot started poorly.
- Yous DO NOT take to limit yourself in any way for any reason.
You lot have the ability to choose your deportment and trailblaze a make new path.
This power is non provisional to anything. Information technology's always bachelor to you. Will you use it?
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Source: https://medium.com/the-mission/youre-more-powerful-than-you-think-1414757b0c7e
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