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Using systems and habits to improve your life is a proven method to succeed. It requires seeing the work as a system and then adjusting your thoughts and behaviors to be able to take advantage of your opportunities in life.
Most people understand the value of having ambition in life. When we are passionate about accomplishing something, we have more motivation to push through obstacles and succeed.
But what if that goal is extreme? It may seem as though we would gain extreme motivation. We will have massive amounts of willpower. We will have the energy needed to push further than anyone else. But this is simply not the case.
Read MoreWith everything going on in the world, I hear many people talking about overcoming adversity. They tend to talk about what everyone needs to do to help the world. It could be around climate change, political corruption, the economy, COVID, or any number of topics.
I remember hearing a story years ago about a famous actor. He was at the top of his craft and had the finances to rival almost anyone. He was concerned about the state of the world and the use of fossil fuels. He saw the impact it had on the earth and what climate change meant to future humans.
Read MoreSome people would call me a control freak. It isn’t that I panic when things get chaotic. It is that when things get chaotic, my first instinct to find the control I have within the craziness.
I am not concerned with every crazy aspect. I want to know what I can influence. That points me to the things I can do something about. There is no sense worrying about the things that you don’t control. But your actions matter and the things that you take ownership of will make the difference in most situations.
Read MoreMost people that I know have solid opinions of the world. They believe in certain things. Many times, those beliefs are unshakable.
This is both good and bad. It is good when it keeps us grounded, humble, hard-working, moral, etc. But it is bad when it holds us back or causes us to unfairly judge those around us.
Read MoreWe are all attracted to the outlier. The individual case that represents an extreme grabs our attention. We wonder how someone got to be so much more successful or such a disaster.
We broadcast it on the news because it makes for good headlines. Those headlines translate into audience interest. That interest means more people tune-in, allowing the network to sell advertising. Money is the ultimate goal. The news media realized long ago, the way for them to make money is to emphasize the outliers.
Read MoreWe all want to be happy and successful. We want our loved ones to experience a pain-free life. We want security and peace of mind.
But we all experience the storms of life. Sometimes these are small and sometimes they overtake our emotions. Sometimes they seem to linger on and sometimes it is over in a flash.
Read MoreSometimes we just have to fight through. We know what we need to do and something or someone keeps dragging us down.
I find this often when working on corporate projects. There tends to be someone that digs in and wants to stop all progress. They don’t realize what they are doing. They think they are being helpful by pointing out potential issues.
Read MoreWe all get off-track from time to time. When we set out to reach a long-term goal, it takes consistence and persistence. But even with the best intentions and solid willpower, we will drift off-track from time to time.
While this may be true, the level is not always the same. Sometimes we get completely side-tracked. We end up far from where we needed to be. Sometimes we are a little off-track and only need a slight tweak to get back on track.
Read MoreMost people want big wins. We want to have enormous success. We want riches. We want admiration. We want to be on top.
Having ambition is fine but it often leads us astray when it comes to the steps needed to reach a higher level of success. Instead of seeing the small steps that we can take, we get preoccupied by daydreaming about the rewards. Instead of working towards our goals, we get sucked into the craving of the win.
Read MoreMost people ignore the small things that they control in their life. They assume that small changes are not enough to create the sort of drastic change that they crave.
It makes sense. If we want massive improvement in life, we have to go to extremes with our efforts. We can’t pretend some small change will create the massive improvement we want. But is that the right way to look at it?
Read MoreMost people coast through life. It is easy to do. Sure, we go to work and pay our bills. Then, we enjoy our time off and the money we have to spend on things we find appealing.
But how many of us get to a point of frustration with our lack of results at some point in life? It might be that we always thought we would have more money by this point in life. Or, we thought we’d have a more fulfilling job. Or, we wished we were in better shape.
Read MoreWe all have choice in life. Many people give away their control in life because they don’t like the options available to them. But we all have the ability to choose.
Many times, we have a choice between happiness and pleasure now or happiness and pleasure later. Staring at the bacon cheeseburger, we know eating it will be delicious but won’t help us get healthy. Seeing the nice new car at the dealership could mean driving around in it now, or keeping our old car running to save money. It could be taking courses at the local college to better your career.
Read MoreYears ago, after reading several motivational books criticizing news reporting, I stopped paying attention to the news. I didn’t visit any news websites. I didn’t watch TV much and if I did, it wasn’t the local or national news. I didn’t read the newspaper.
During that time, my mood improved. I stopped surrounding myself with people bitterly criticizing everything around them. I stopped focusing on “keeping up” with the news of the day.
Read MoreThe older I get the more I see hypocrisy in how we judge others. This isn’t because we are all horrible people. Rather, it is due to the complex systems in life and the human brain’s inability to process full systems.
Instead, we rely on linear thinking. We break the complex system down into something understandable. But we do it in a way that evaporates the many aspects of the system in our mind. We ignore them. It isn’t that they no longer exist, it is that they no longer exist in our comprehension.
Read MoreI love watching college football. This past season has been the strangest that I can ever recall. COVID has changed everything in life and college football is no different. Comparing this year to last year feels like two opposite ends of a spectrum.
One of the themes from this year is to keep moving in the face of adversity. All teams are facing adversity in one form or another. They might have positive cases on their staff. They might have players test positive. They might have opponents canceling games due to COVID.
Read MoreSystems are powerful elements of our lives that go largely unnoticed. They are ignored because they are subtle, hidden, and lack emotional shock.
Instead we focus our attention on events. Events are attention-grabbing. They pull us in with emotional shock. When something happens that is different from the norm, our curiosity awakens.
Read MoreOne of the payoffs to creating the right systems and habits in your life is that the benefits will keep growing. As you work the system, the system grows in intensity. It produces greater output. It improves as it is worked.
This means that the individual actions are paradoxical. They are both less important but also more important than you think. Each individual action might not mean much in the grand scheme. But each individual action is a leverage point that gives back more when you keep at it.
Read MoreMost people want the world to change. They see things they dislike. They find aspects unfair. They wish for the world to be better.
There is an inherent problem with this. Because people find fault in everything, there is always something to blame for our own unhappiness. We can always find something in the world that isn’t right, and then use it as a scapegoat.
Read MoreSystems thinkers know about feedback loops. We see them all over. We understand how powerful they can be.
Feedback loops take the output from a system and use it to influence the input. Sometimes we take the output and put it back into the system. Sometimes the output is monitored and then the input is adjusted.
Read MoreIn the systems and habits approach to improvement, we rely on discipline. But we use discipline in a different manner.
Using discipline long-term is difficult. Using discipline in the short-term is much easier. Yet we all fall into the fallacy that discipline has to be maintained for long periods for it to matter.
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