Previously, I posted about how I had decided to utilise one of my (many) empty notebooks as a place to record snippets of practical wisdom. It would be a place to return to and remind myself of useful nuggets of truth whenever I’m in need of a good kick up the arse. This is another selection of the wisdom that I have jotted down.
Why do we fall?
So we can learn to pick ourselves up.
Yes, this a much-overused quote from a certain bat-themed superhero movie but, if you subtract the pop-culture and t-shirts emblazoned with this quote, you will find that it remains an incredibly useful piece of advice. We seem to be petrified of failure, whether it’s due to being afraid of letting ourselves down or losing face in front of others. It also doesn’t help that our society and the media are set on punishing failure. However, failure is absolutely necessary in order to facilitate growth because how else are you going to learn what does and doesn’t work? It is only through failure that we can let go of our fears and learn to take risks. It is only through failure that we learn to analyse what went wrong, modify our approach(es) and become more adept at something. It is only through failure that we learn how to take the punches and move on from setbacks, rather than dwelling on them for prolonged periods of time.
Ask yourself: who is really living their life? Person A who takes risks and sometimes fails, but is at least trying new things and amassing experience, or Person B who stays inside their self-limiting comfort zone and devotes time and energy to mocking or criticising Person A’s failures?
Never ask advice of someone whom you wouldn’t want to trade places with.
This one seems obvious but we all do it from time-to-time, myself included. We ask the wrong people for advice on our problems and wonder why we get no closer to solving them. We need to learn to surround ourselves with the right people and not imitate those who are crashing and burning or hurting others for personal profit. As an example, a player of a man might be shagging multiple women and walking around with a big grin on his face right now, but would you want to be in his shoes when it all (inevitably) goes horribly wrong and his wife/girlfriend finds out?
Action > Inspiration > Motivation
Do something – anything
I – like many people – used to believe that you had to be inspired first in order to gain the motivation needed to take action. This isn’t entirely false as we all occasionally find ourselves struck by inspiration while going about our everyday lives. However, subscribing to the “Inspiration First” method is far from guaranteed to yield results. It’s why so many people don’t accomplish anything or better themselves; because they are sitting around waiting to be inspired – waiting for somebody/something else to come to them. It puts you in the passenger seat and can lead to a self-victimising attitude where you blame the world around you for not providing inspiration, when you should be out there hunting it yourself.
This isn’t to say that you need to become a larger-than-life go-getter who travels the world and seeks crazy adventure. “Taking action” means doing anything, as long as it’s something. For example, if you want to write but feel as if you are lacking inspiration, just resolve to write something – anything – to get the wheels turning. If a big essay needs writing but you aren’t feeling motivated, or are intimidated by the figurative mountain of work before you, simply decide to write a single paragraph. You may well find the pressure on yourself lifted and one paragraph will become two, then three. Before you know it, you could have filled several pages with words without noticing how long you have been at it.
Even with this blog, I’ve sometimes not wanted to write but I say, “okay, I’ll just type out the introductory paragraph.” More often than not, I’ll go on to produce the entire post or, at the least, a good chunk more than that opening paragraph. Often, it’s the act of getting started that is the most difficult but any small step towards achieving something can be enough to stoke your boiler, build up a strong head of steam and find forwards motion.
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