19 Ideas to Get You Where You Want to Go
1. Every day asks everything of you.
The point of working hard is to bargain with the future. Sacrificing in the present will get you a better future.
But there is also this. Ideally, you like the things you do. Otherwise, why would you do them? So to not put forth your effort each day is to sacrifice the gift of the opportunity to do what you like doing.
There’s no guarantee you’ll get to do these things tomorrow, and an age where it’s impossible to participate — like preferred exercises or the mental capacity to read — will come.
Don’t waste the gift.
2. “Be true to the game, because the game will be true to you. If try to shortcut the game, then the game will shortcut you.” — Michael Jordan
Respect everything that you’re doing. How you do the small things is how you do the big things.
Every touch-point is a place to enact positive movement forward, to improve, and to move toward your goals.
3. There’s over 7 billion people. Why not do what you want?
Once you’ve established a framework of morality and ethics — which I believe we all require as conscious beings — why not go on with what’s unique to you? There’s over 7 billion people on the planet. You’re simultaneously not important at all, while still being the most important person in the world (from your personal narrative).
But practically speaking, you actually are very important. As clinical psychologist and professor Jordan Peterson points out, over the course of our lives we’ll know at least 1,000 people and they’ll know at least 1,000 people. That means we’re one person away from a million and two people away from a billion. We’re at the center of a network. And we’re a node in this network. Every decision we make has an ever expanding ripple effect that we’ll never be able to measure.
So start making the decisions that are true to you and go on with them. Orison Marden says, “The Creator has not given you a longing to do that which you have no ability to do.” If it’s in you, it’s there for a reason and it came from somewhere. So chase after it.
4. If someone has an opinion, find a way to have the opposite.
Have a contrary opinion just as a thought exercise.
What if you did the opposite of the plan? What would the consequences be? What about the results? Would there be unseen advantages?
Think like this at home. At work. At the gym. Don’t disobey your boss and people who are trusting you with tasks and responsibilities, but a 360-degree view of an idea, and questions to to attack it from all sides will give you the best solutions, and maybe even help you discover solutions you didn’t know were possible. Use this method for big life questions, too.
5. Don’t ever be fooled into thinking you’re less alone than you are.
You’re all alone in this thing we call life, and that’s ok. No one understands you, your motivations, or why you’re attracted to the things you want. Hell, for the most part you don’t understand what’s happening in your subconscious.
We all have the opportunity to connect with others, but they won’t fundamentally get what’s only going on inside of us and not them. This is why communication is so important. It’s our only tool to effectively explain ourselves to others and they to us.
Alain de Botton sums this idea up well in his segment of Tim Ferriss’ book Tools of Titans. “To blame someone for not understanding you is deeply unfair because, first of all, we don’t understand ourselves, and even if we do understand ourselves, we have such a hard time communicating ourselves to other people. Therefore, to be furious and enraged and bitter that people don’t get all of who we are is really a cruel piece of immaturity.”
6. If you had an extra hour in your day but had to spend it doing something you don’t usually do, what would you do?
Maybe asking this sort of question makes you realize there’s things you want to do that you aren’t doing. These things could improve your life.
Tim Ferriss has a question where he asks, if you did the opposite for 48 hours, what would happen?
Here’s more questions he asks.
7. Don’t ask questions that keep you from action.
So we are talking about questions, but stop asking questions that keep you from action. If you have a particular bent toward being existential and philosophical like I do, then indulge at your own peril, and remember that these questions are fun until they prevent action.
If something’s especially unanswerable, stop asking it or just choose a religion or frameworkto force yourself into a belief that will prevent questioning that isn’t helpful.
Actions and mistakes are much more useful than idle thinking.
8. If you want something, say so.
What are you aiming for? No one will ever know if you don’t say it. This is important at work and in your relationships.
9. Never believe people when they compliment you.
“Whom the gods wish to destroy they first call promising,” Cyril Connolly said.
Why should you believe a compliment? Affirmation is nice, but we don’t need any reason to think highly of ourselves. Ego isn’t ever useful. Even a small dose can be the starting flame that sparks a fire.
Our job isn’t to think highly of ourselves. It’s to get things done.
10. Wait for what you want.
Photographers will wait hours, days, even years to get the perfect picture. One photographer waited six years.
But us? Six years? We can hardly wait six minutes for a latte.
Learn how to wait. Learn how to play the long-game. Six years happens quickly, and what you want doesn’t happen without training and patience.
Like the Stoic philosopher Epictetus said, “”It is true, however, that no bull reaches maturity in an instant, nor do men become heroes overnight. We must endure a winter training, and can’t be dashing into situations for which we aren’t yet prepared.”
Wait for what you’re working toward, whether it be the job promotion, the flourishing family life, or the Instagram picture with your kids and Santa. These things take time. Just wait.
11. “Life is about execution rather than purpose.” — Nassim Taleb
Let that idea marinate.
12. “The good life — the vita beata — is like reading a Russian novel: It takes two hundred pages of struggling with the characters before one can start enjoying things. Then the agitation starts to make sense.” — Nassim Taleb
Here’s a nicely written reminder of waiting for what we want. Most of life is like this. Things take long periods of time before they yield results or satisfaction.
13. How you live today is how you’ll every day of your life.
It isn’t only that procrastination will leave you frustrated and doesn’t yield results, but your actions today are also what will determine what you do tomorrow. The likelihood that you live out tomorrow any different than you lived out today is pretty low. How you interacted with the world last Monday is also probably how you’ll interact with the world next Monday.
We’re creatures of habit and routine. That’s not to say we aren’t actors capable of change. Our ability to change is exactly why the way we choose to live today is so important. It will also determine our tomorrow.
14. The quality of your life depends on the quality of your questions.
Solving questions isn’t just about solving the obvious ones, like what career you want or in which neighborhood you should buy a house. We have to solve larger questions, like our purpose or how we should conduct ourselves. Better yet, there’s more hidden questions to solve for that we might not have considered, or can’t consider, if we haven’t trained ourselves to think critically and haven’t solved our basic personal questions.
It’s much different to ask yourself what you want to be when you grow up then it is to ask, “what’s the smallest good act I can do today that will better my future?” One question is abstract and might not have an answer, the other is practical and actionable.
How about the question from number six? If you had an extra hour in a day but had to spend it doing something you don’t normally do, what would you do? These types of questions can lead to massive results.
15. Just because you can rationalize it doesn’t mean you made the right decision.
We all tell ourselves stories. It’s how humans make sense of the world. This is why we see people become so resilient in the face of tragedy or loss, and why they’re able to create meaning out of despair. Our inclination toward this may tell us something about the divinity of life, but at the least, it tells us we have a tendency towards creating stories to rationalize a world that we can’t understand.
But this is a dangerous tendency. I’ve seen many people knowingly place themselves in situations that would only lead to harm or heartbreak, and instead of finding faults in their initial decisions, they choose to rationalize them after the fact. You know these people, too. They use language like “it was all worth it” and “I learned about myself,” even though they objectively took themselves through unnecessary trauma, stress, or simply wasted time.
Just because you can rationalize something after the fact does not mean that it was actually a good decision. This is a lazy way of thinking that will only prepare your future self for rationalizations about the poor decisions your current self is making now.
16. Don’t waste your words.
Don’t say what you don’t mean. Don’t speak when you can’t provide value. People remember what you say and what you didn’t.
Use words wisely and with caution. Everything is a test. The world is watching, and they are hearing.
17. Do something your future self will thank you for.
Don’t create problems in the future by neglecting the present. You’ll be happy now, but your future self won’t be.
And that future self will have the habit of disappointing another future self, and so the cycle will continue.
18. The most important thing is what you’re doing now.
Focus on the task at hand with no distractions. Once you’ve built a life on a constant focus of what’s in front of you, you’ll move toward where you need to go.
Besides, what is more important than the thing you’re supposed to be doing right now? The future is yet to come. The past is behind you. Tasks are asking for your attention now.
19. Your fate hangs in the balance. It depends on what you believe.
If you can’t think, you’re stuck acting out your nature, like a program. This is how animals operate. They don’t consciously decide to wake up and go about their business as animals, it’s how they’re wired. This isn’t us. We have the capacity to shape ourselves and create new realities. What we choose to believe — or don’t — is of dire consequence. And this isn’t suggesting an irrational positive outlook that self-help literature preaches.
Our belief systems will affect the ethics and morals we apply to both ourselves and other people. Our beliefs will also determine what we think ourselves and others are capable of.
Like I’ve mentioned, the luxury of being human is that we can bargain with the future by sacrificing in the present. But what we’re willing to sacrifice depends entirely on what we allow — or train — ourselves to believe. If we use systems of thinking that force us to aim for the highest good, even if that’s in an abstract and metaphysical sense, then we can’t quantify how that will trickle down into our everyday lives throughout our jobs, families, relationships, and health. It could yield massive results. What we believe is of dire consequence.
