Life is not easy. We have to learn a lot.

As I sit down in my chair to write this at 5:30 in the morning, watching the sun through my window just starting to rise I think about all the time I spent learning so many things. One of them, rising early and doing the important work first. Yes, this is important work, for me and hopefully for you as well.

Coming next, 5 ideas that will save you time the sooner you learn them.

#1 Embrace incompletion

One hard truth about life is that there is no completion, there isn’t going to be a point in your life or mine or anybody’s that is going to be complete.

You can organize and order things in your life (marriage, job, finances) but if you are not putting attention daily on everything, it will start to crumble. This is just life, change is always happening and it is just natural for things to fall apart if no attention and care are put unto them.

This is quite liberating if you think about it. You no longer hope for things to stay the same all time, you know they won’t and so you act accordingly. Just realizing this will save you so much time because you will not hope something that isn’t aligned with reality.

The answer here is a simple one, just put attention and care on what is important to you and do everything in your power to maintain it that way.

#2 Realize it’s about the journey, not the destination

Now that we’ve embraced incompletion. We can realize it’s about the journey, not the destination.

Wanting the destination is wanting completion. If the destination is what we desire we are putting aside everything that is needed to get there, which is the fun part.

If you choose to follow the destination or completion, you are never going to actually live, because you will live forever for something that you cannot have. The destination will be forever changing with time and so it’s just illogical to think about it as something achievable.

The journey, however, is experienced right now, and you have the power to act in it right now. This is why it’s about the journey not about the destination.

The next time you catch yourself thinking about something you don’t yet have done or achieved. Think better about what you are doing right now to get there and enjoy the process of doing it, enjoy the journey.

#3 Realize that you don’t want the material, you want the capacity for the material

If you are focused on the destination or the “end game”, you will surely want the material stuff, right now.

It’s easy to think that having a great girlfriend, great car, a house in the woods and everything that is being marketed to us basically the entire day is going to make us happy. Again, wrong.

Once you get the shiny treasure, it is no longer a treasure, it becomes just another object between your possessions. Think about it. I’m sure you’ve had that feeling before, you buy something, something that you really believe is going to make you really happy but after a month you just get used to it and don’t think about it as much.

The feeling of wanting stuff right now is wanting completion and destination. What you want instead is the capacity for achieving everything you want and that is available right at this moment to you. (It’s about the journey!).

“But man postpones or remembers; he does not live in the present, but with reverted eye laments the past, or, heedless of the riches that surround him, stands on tiptoe to foresee the future. He cannot be happy and strong until he too lives with nature in the present, above time.”

― Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance

#4 Growth is everything.

Whether you think you can and whether you think you can’t, you are right.

Henry Ford

Once incompletion and the journey are embraced, growth is inevitable. You will no longer be daydreaming about the things that you do not yet have but you will actually get to work. Work, attention, and care on what is important to you will make you inevitably better at securing it.

Also, you have to believe that growth and change are possible (change is the fundamental law of the universe if that helps), if you choose to grow, you will be focused on how you can get to be better at whatever your work is and you will enjoy your journey so much more.

Choose to believe in your capacity for growth and get to work

This is quite liberating, isn’t it? All that you need, you have it right now at this moment, yourself. This must be practiced daily, I have to remind myself of the journey the entire day, but with time, will grow to become better and better at it.

The sooner you realize these concepts, the sooner you’ll start seeing results and enjoying life, you will no longer be waiting to live but actually, start living.

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