Thursday, November 28th 2019

Sometimes a subtle reason why you make a decision, can make all the difference in your success.

Some quick negativity might make it fast and easy to correct behavior, if you already have a lot of positive momentum in your life - it's an easy way to "teach yourself a lesson".

But if you haven't built up a huge amount of confidence in yourself yet, or if you are beginning a new chapter of your life with a lot of stress and risk (like going to college or starting a business), sometimes negative judgments over time can really slow you down.

Substituting those negative judgments with positive judgments is more important in the long-term, if you want to gain confidence and momentum, over months and years.

Sometimes perspective makes all the difference

Instead of telling yourself: "I'm quitting video games because they waste time." (Time management is important - but this is still a negative statement.)

Maybe try something like: "I'm quitting video games because they're irrelevant to my goals." (Goals are a very positive thing in life.)

Instead of telling yourself: "League of Legends is a horrible game that sucks out your soul." (Which may even be true.)

Maybe try something like: "League of Legends is something I moved on as I became more mature." (Wisdom is something we all strive to learn.)

Instead of telling yourself: "What's the point in living if everything sucks and we're all gonna die anyway?" (Never feels good when I feel this way.)

Maybe try something like: "Life has highs and lows, it's only when you are low, when we can learn to truly appreciate happiness." (This is one way I've learned to deal with feeling bad. I also play disc golf to feel better.)

You learn different ways of framing things over time, and a positive perspective can really go a long way.

Goals are a very positive thing in life.

This might just be why video games are so addicting. They manage your goals for you, and constantly remind you what you need to be working on. Unfortunately this property might actually prevent us from learning the "goal management" skills needed to succeed in real life.

Goals are essential for us to prioritize our time. Is it more important to work out today? Or is it more important to eat a healthy meal? Spend time talking with an old friend? Or get some homework done? Goals make these decisions easy.

Sometimes it takes time to figure out what your goals should be. You have to think about how much time you have, what your skills are, how much effort this goal would take, how much risk there is in pursuing this goal... Once you decide that it's worth it, then all you need to think about is making progress as smoothly as possible.

Goals don't always make the work feel easy and good. Sometimes it takes time to connect with your goal. It's often hard and slow when you get started on something new. However, the harder the goal is and the more pain you go through, the better it feels when you make progress and win.

Whatever it is you decided to achieve today, I know you can do it!