1/ Uncertainty (accepting unknown) is part of your life.
Some things you’ll never know and that’s okay. There’s no need to keep dwelling on them, or over-analysing 50 different scenarios.
Living in uncertainty should not put limits (or boundaries) on your actions.
Remember:
- Uncertainty might lead to the need of control, and further to the “illusion of control”. Understand risks you take and probability of losing or winning.
- Increase the odds of winning. Think of what you can impact, and of what you can’t. Focus only on the former.
- Don’t let the unknown paralyse your actions. Don’t get into: I don’t know what result to expect, so I will better not try it.
- Accept uncertainty and unknown. Get used to it. Keep emotional discipline while betting on something.
- Fear of uncertainty might push you towards shortcuts and lack of patience. Taking a shortcut is not always bad but you need to make such decisions reasonably.
- Uncertainty might lead you to perfectionism that gives you the feeling of control: “If I do it perfectly, others will appreciate me”, “If I do it perfectly, it will bring better results.” Beware of such situations.
- Unknown might influence your self-confidence and self-worthiness. Don’t whip yourself for not knowing.
2/ Success is your decision.
There are two aspects here.
First, there’s no objective definition or metric of success; success is a very ambiguous term. Although we all have a common concept of what successful life looks like, it is, in fact, totally different for each of us.
Second, it’s only you who’s able to work for your own success. Of course, others can help you but you are the one who needs to put the work in.
Remember:
- We are the ones who create “standards” of our life. If your dream is to live in a house outside of the city, it is your dream. Someone else might feel unhappy in such conditions.
- No one should ever define the success for you, but you are not completely free to choose whatever you want. Don’t forget that people around you will have a strong influence on your perception of success, and you will have to conform to social, moral, and legal rules that exist in the environment you live in.
- Don’t look for external approval or approbation of what you are doing (as long as it lies within the common sense and it doesn’t cause harm to anyone). Very often, your search for external approbation is just an illusion of your own convictions. Deep down it doesn’t matter. If you are not convinced to what you do, then who else will be?
- Your definition of success might change over time. Don’t think of it as something constant and be open to change it along the way. Never feel bad about this.
- Tracking and/or journaling might help you with defining success and help you achieve it. If you are not sure you are following the right path start tracking it more carefully.
Open questions:
- If you are convinced to do something and it’s aligned with your values, should anyone stop you from doing it? Even if they think that it might be bad for you or harmful?
- What’s the rationale of people who do evil? Are they convinced they do the right and good thing?
3/ Always Be Learning.
Learning is important. It shouldn’t be surprising to anyone. Still, so many of us have a learning “trauma” after our time at school. Once we finished the education period, we focus on “working”, not learning. We think of learning as something unnecessary.
This is an error in our thinking. Learning is as much important for doing, as doing for learning. Without learning you are not able to progress, and without trying to progress you are not able to learn something new.
There are two types of learning: a) Through our own experience (through our successes & failures); b) From experience of others. First type is the practical one. Second, the theoretical one. Both are important.
Remember:
- Reading books is more useful than you think it is.
- Everyone has their blind spots (gaps in our thinking). Identify them and be happy whenever you find them. Being aware of being wrong is a privilege.
- Don’t feel bad about being “stupid” in certain areas. Not knowing everything is normal.
- Whenever you don’t know something, write it down. Write questions you’d like to know the answers to, and find a way to answer them.
- Find time for reflections and integration of your own experiences. That’s the only way to learn from your experience.
- Write notes obsessively. The process of writing will let you clear your mind, and structure your thoughts later. Write down your thoughts after each meeting, session, or discussion.
- Journaling, tracking, setting up systems will help you draw the right conclusions. Don’t overestimate your memory capacities and your brain’s tendency to fool itself.
- Very often, to learn something, you need to act and do it. There’s a saying that the most certain way to failing is not trying. From the outcome perspective, there’s no real difference between “not trying” and “trying and failing” beside your emotional feeling. What’s even more important, without trying you will never be able to improve yourself.
- Be open for new perspectives. Listen carefully. Understand something first, so you can judge it later. Never reject someone’s opinion before understanding it clearly.
To be continued.
More principles will be posted soon.