07 May The secret of 100% commitment and success is 10 behaviours
To enjoy any success in life, including happiness, one needs to find a way to commit (ideally 100%) to those behaviours that create success and happiness. In this great article by Benjamin P Hardy on the Ladders, 10 key behaviours are outlined…
Viktor Frankl survived the Holocaust. The reason he survived, from his perspective, is because he maintained a sense of “purpose” for himself. He saw a future beyond the Holocaust for himself.
Without having a “future,” Frankl’s torture and suffering in the concentration camps would have had no meaning. Without meaning, it would have been unbearable. Hence, Frankl discerned that when people lost a sense of hope in their future, they quickly decayed and died in such circumstances.
It is for this reason that Frankl regularly quoted Friedrich Nietzsche, who said, “He who has a why to live for can bear almost anyhow.”
Dan Sullivan, the famed entrepreneurial coach said something similar but different from Nietzsche: “The bigger your future, the better your present.”
When you have a specific future you are striving for and committed to, your present circumstances and experiences take on a new meaning. You’re able to convert your experience — even your painful experience — into learning, growth, and change. “Happiness” isn’t the absence of pain. It is a radical appreciation for life endowed by a sense of purpose and meaning. You can find deep joy even in your hardest moments because such moments have meaning.
If you don’t have a future you’re actively striving for, then you can’t actively convert your experience into learning. You won’t be able to curate the needed experiences for targeted and accurate growth. Instead, you’ll likely repeat your experiences over and over. Life will become routine and dull, and your personality will become overly predictable and stable over time.
Put bluntly, the only way to have a powerful “present” is by advancing courageously toward a specific future. When you’re committed to a bigger future, your present becomes far less predictable. Rather than living within the confines of your narrow comfort zone, you begin embracing uncertainty. You begin stepping outside of your “known” world and begin approaching the world of your Future Self.
When this becomes your situation, then your past stops being the thing predicting your personality and behavior. Instead, your Future Self becomes the thing predicting your personality and behavior.
This article lays out the key elements that will enable you to commit to and achieve amazing goals. To be absolutely clear: You can achieve incredible things in your life. Your current goals are limited by what your current level of awareness and confidence. As you grow as a person, your perspectives will change. You’ll see that you can achieve so much more than you once thought was possible. You’ll look back on your former goals and smile, seeing how far you’ve come.
Let’s begin:
1. Define Your Future Self (No More Than 3 Years Out)
Only through imaging a future self with improved skills may we be able to motivate, plan, and execute the honing of skills through deliberate practice. — Dr. Thomas Suddendorf, Dr. Melissa Brinums, and Dr. Kana Imuta
It is fundamentally impossible to live intentionally and “on-purpose” if you haven’t defined your future self. Even more, it’s impossible to actively learn in a transformational way without a clear future self in mind.
Psychologists call active learning “deliberate practice.” You can’t engage in such “practice” or learning unless you have a very clear goal. You need a clear goal and also a clear future identity, as the person you plan to become. The person who has achieved the goal you are seeking.
Without a clear goal, you can’t have motivation or hope. Without a clear goal, you can’t have a meaningful identity.
You need to see yourself as the person who has already achieved your goal. That doesn’t mean you pretend to be that person today. But it does mean that you are consistently taking that person’s advice (your future self). Yes, you are taking your future self’s advice and making decisions based on your future self’s preferences and circumstances — not your current ones.
The worst thing you could do for your growth and progress is to be definitive about who you are today. Yet, when you hear most people explain themselves, they speak in incredibly definitive terms:
- “I’m an introvert.”
- “I’m not good with people.”
- “I’m bad at networking.”
The more definitively you describe your present self, the more you stunt your future potential. Your future self is far more important than your current self. Your current self is temporary and should be held loosely.
Don’t hold your current identity so tightly. Instead, decide who you want to be in the future. The #1 regret people have on their deathbed is that they didn’t have the courage to be the person they wanted to be. Instead, they lived up to the expectations of those around them.
The first step in avoiding the #1 deathbed regret is to define your future self.
- Who do you really want to be?
- What circumstances do you want?
- What attributes and characteristics?
- What relationships?
- What does your typical day look like?
- What are you focused on?
- What do you stand for?
2. Start Getting All of the Information You Possibly CanWhen I was younger, so much younger than today
I never needed anybody’s help in any way
But now these days are gone, I’m not so self-assured
And now I find I’ve changed my mind and opened up the doors — The Beatles
In 2015 I decided I was ready to become a writer. I was in my first year as a Ph.D. student in organizational psychology and had dreamed of being a writer since 2010. The “future self” I defined back then was someone who was making at least 6-figures as a writer so I could provide for my wife and 3 foster children. I wanted to be writing books with one of the major traditional publishers. I wanted the freedom to work when and where I wanted.
After clearly defining my future self, I needed a tangible goal or outcome that would make that reality possible. In order to do so, I had to seek tons and tons of advice.
How the heck do you become a professional writer?
How do you get book deals?
These are the questions I was asking myself. In order to get answers, I had to start doing a great deal of research. I started emailing and getting on the phone with literary agents and authors.
Over time, I started noticing a theme in the responses I was getting: You can’t become a professional author without an audience. You’re going to need to start blogging and building an email list. You need at least 5–10K emails to get a small book deal. In one conversation with Jeff Goins, I was told I needed at least 100K emails to get a 6-figure book deal. That was the ticket I needed.
Once you can conceptualize your vision into a tangible outcome, your motivation will skyrocket. According to the Expectancy Theory of Motivation — you need a clear and compelling outcome, as well as a clear path to achieving that outcome. Without these, you won’t be motivated. You’ll procrastinate. Hope Theory argues the same thing: You need a goal and a path to achieving that goal to have hope. Pretty freaking important. Without hope, life becomes torture and meaningless.
Once you’ve defined your own future self, you need to start getting information. You need to develop a clear goal and plan to become your future self.
3. Tell Everyone About Your Plan
Watch your thoughts, they become words;
watch your words, they become actions;
watch your actions, they become habits;
watch your habits, they become character;
watch your character, for it becomes your destiny. — Frank Outlaw
Your next step is to begin telling everyone about your goals. This may seem counter-intuitive since many people argue you should keep your goals private. So hear me out.
Look at change like you would an addict overcoming an addiction. The worst thing the addict could do is try overcoming the addiction alone through grit and willpower. Said Johann Hari in his incredibly important TED Talk, “The opposite of addiction is not sobriety, it is human connection.”
You know someone is ready to overcome an addiction when they begin opening up about it. You know someone is serious about a change when they go public about that change.
It takes courage to be open about your goals. It takes courage to be open about your failings. Radical candor and honesty are crucial to success. Openness and honesty are essential to moving forward in your life. Dan Sullivan has said, “All progress starts by telling the truth.”
In Man’s Search for Meaning, Viktor Frankl quoted Spinoza’s Ethics, which said: “Emotion, which is suffering, ceases to be suffering as soon as we form a clear and precise picture of it.”
Mr. Rogers said: “Anything that’s human is mentionable, and anything that is mentionable can be more manageable. When we can talk about our feelings, they become less overwhelming, less upsetting, and less scary. The people we trust with that important talk can help us know that we are not alone.”
What do all of these incredible statements mean?
They mean that when you become more open and honest as a person, life becomes far more manageable. You stop needlessly suffering internally about unfulfilled dreams or former hurts. You move forward. And that’s the freaking key! Moving forward! That’s where we are about here. Moving forward as powerfully and authentically as possible.
It’s impossible to be “authentic” without being honest. The key to being honest is about voicing what you truly want for yourself deep-down. If you’re too afraid of what those around you think, then you’re not committed to your dreams. If you’re too afraid of what fools or trolls on the internet think, then you’re not committed to your dreams.
Once you become committed, your thoughts will become words. Your words will become actions. Your actions will become habits. Your habits will become your character and personality, which will produce your results and outcomes.
Your identity is the story you tell about yourself. When you start telling people a new story, focused on your future self, then your future, not your past, can be the thing predicting your behavior. Your future can pull you forward. Your identity and story, and behavior and environment, can start to align themselves to your desired future. Your “dreams” will become inevitable. It’s a purging process, but one you can get increasingly better at…
… keep reading the full & original article HERE
#happiness #positivepsychology #success