Taking Advice, Curiosity and Remaining Flexible

The best way to feel lost in life:

Do what those around you say that you're 'supposed to do' without question, and dismiss your natural curiosities as frivolous.

For me, these 'supposed to do's' came in the form of advice from the people in my environment.

As a young man, with little experience of my own, I took most advice from the people I trusted as gospel.

The problem with a lot of advice however is that it can only be given based on the givers own experiences, or based on the easily observable experiences of the masses.

Everything we hear, including the advice we receive, orients us to see the world from a certain perspective.

If your values and goals are not perfectly aligned with those of the advice giver, then their advice and influence may be directing you somewhere that you don't necessarily want to be.

Realizing this has made me more cautious to how I take advice, but I do believe that you can learn something from everyone.

Essentially I find that most advice is at least 50% good.

I find that typical advice consists of a 'how' and an 'end state'.

• Go to college ,and major in something particular, (how) to get a good job (end state)

• Land a corporate job (how) to earn a stable income (end state)

• Cook all of your meals (how) to save money (end state)

• Go on a run (how) to stay in shape (end state)

It's universally accepted that having a good job, a stable income, saving money, and staying in shape are good things.

But if you ask 100 different people how to achieve those things, they will provide many different answers.

My problem -

Throughout my life I've accepted advice 'wholesale'.

That is to say that in some cases I wrongly assumed that the 'how' and the 'end state' were uniquely and inseparably linked.

From the examples above that means I thought that pursuing a major in economics or, or something similar, was a requirement for earning the income that I desired.

Not only that, but I genuinely thought that the people in my environment actually cared 'how' I achieved those 'end states'.

I also believed that my parents cared that I went to college, when in reality they most likely just cared that I be able to earn a decent wage in the future.

The reality is that life is much more nuanced and that no one really cares how you do anything so long as it's legal and ethical.

No one cares if you make a million dollars as a corporate executive or as the owner of a surf shop.

It really doesn't matter whether you stay in shape by running or by training martial arts.

The HOW is mostly up to you…

Determining HOW:

If you have a specific path in mind, then seek out mentors with those specific experiences.

If you want to be a business owner, ask a business owner how they did it.

If you want to be a bodybuilder, ask a bodybuilder how they did it.

Take advice from the people who have done what you want to do, but always be mindful of even the slight differences in values that you might have.

If your mentor was successful in business, but has 2 divorces, keep that in mind when receiving their advice.

What if you haven't identified a specific path that you'd like to take? You don't know what you want to do, or can't decide what to do.

If this is the case, then lean into your natural curiosities.

Being genuinely interested/curious about something is one of the biggest competitive advantages that you can have.

There is an energy that comes from obsessing over a new hobby, or researching a particular subject down an internet rabbit hole.

That well of energy is almost infinite in depth and cannot be faked.

When you're not genuinely interested in something, it's impossible to engage with the subject matter at the level necessary to be majorly successful.

Without it, you may be able to pass along with average or slightly above average results, but you'll never be able to compete with the people who are doing that thing because they genuinely want to.

In today's world, a resourceful person can turn almost any curiosity into a career.

What happens when we don't determine the HOW for ourselves?

A lineage of decisions made off of 'supposed' to's will land you in a place where you don't recognize yourself.

After years of ignoring your curiosities and interests in the name of practicality you create a deep chasm between you and your interests.

You've spent so much time training yourself to think that work is simply a means to an end, that you begin dismissing your curiosities as frivolous emotions that are to be disregarded.

This will leave you wondering how you got so far separated from your passions and interests.

You'll be in a place of immense friction between inner and outer worlds.

And you'll say to yourself, “I'm not sure why I feel this way, I've done everything that I was supposed to”.

Unfortunately -

We sometimes use practicality as a means to justify doing things that we're not really interested in.

You may have to do something 'practical' in the short term to pay your bills. But practicality as a long term strategy for life is pretty boring.

That said, carving our own way and building based on curiosities can be challenging.

There are so many influences from our environment that it can be hard to tell what it is we think vs. what it is we've been told to think.

Once we identify that something needs to change, it can be even harder to change what doing.

There are two obstacles that are likely impending you from doing just that.

2 Obstacles:

1. Consumption without articulation -

   1. If you only consume information and are never forced to articulate your beliefs and understandings, you won't sufficiently understand your own mind.

2. Psychological inflexibility -

   1. An unwillingness to adopt a new identity or seek new solutions will leave you in the same place

Navigating the Obstacles

1. Consume and Articulate

In the age of information we constantly consume podcasts, audio books, YouTube videos, articles, posts, etc.

I'm guilty of feasting on information under the false impression that I'd be able to reference the information as my own during future discussions.

But by and large we fail to interrogate these ideas we are presented with.

Similarly, we fail to interrogate our own internally held beliefs.

The problem is that these un-interrogated beliefs then guide us as we make decisions.

We essentially plan a route to where we are going without first knowing where we are.

The solution is to organize and articulate your thoughts:

Force yourself to articulate why it is you do things a particular way, or why it is that you agree or disagree with a certain view.

There is a reason that your favorite podcaster sounds so articulate and well spoken. It's because podcasting forces them to consistently work through ideas.

They organize their thoughts while researching before the show .

Then they talk through those points in more detail with their guest and take more notes while doing so.

After recording they might even listen to the discussion again before it gets published and take new insights from that.

You likely don't need a podcast, but you do need to take time to flush our your ideas into coherent sentences and paragraphs.

Talk to someone about them. Write them down. Voice record them. Journal.

Anything that forces you to get the idea out of your head will do.

Once it's out of your head in those forms it will be much easier to identify gaps in thinking.

By doing this you will start to gain a better understanding of the mental models from which you currently operate.

You'll uncover the models that have brought you to where you are now.

You'll be able to spot things that don't make sense or that you may not agree with.

If we don't take stock of our thoughts and beliefs then we are liable to repeat them in the future at our own detriment.

2. Be psychologically flexibility

Physical fitness taught me how to be disciplined.

I developed the discipline to go to the gym on days I didn't feel like it.

I used the discipline to go on runs when the weather sucked.

Applying the discipline framework brought me results.

But can I 'discipline' myself into finding a new career?

Discipline and consistency are underpinnings of anything that we do, but they aren't the only mental tools that we have available to us.

Example:

What do you do if you've been consistently going to the gym, cooking all your meals and sleeping enough but still aren't seeing the progress that you'd like?

Is the answer more discipline?

Probably not.

In this case, it's likely that you're better off re-examine WHAT you're doing at the gym and WHAT you're cooking.

It sounds simple but…

Once you've learned HOW to work (hard & consistently) then you need to learn to identify WHAT you should be spending your time working on (things with disproportionately large returns).

HOW we should work rarely changes.

But WHAT we work on will constantly need to evolve if we wish to continually progress.

Changing what you work on, or identifying new things to work on, can be challenging because we often derive our identity from the things that we do.

Personal Example:

Recently I paused my martial arts training in order to go all in on fitness & running ultra-marathons. This was difficult for me because I had started to build an identity that involved me doing martial arts.

So at first, stepping away from martial arts gave me the feeling that I was being un-disciplined, or even that I was quitting.

Making this shift in what I did required me to change my identity from someone who did a bunch of different things, to someone who was totally focused on fitness/running.

In order to change my identity like this I needed a certain level of psychological flexibility.

After I made that decision and shifted all of my focused to running, my results improved dramatically.

But how did I even realize that I needed to stop training martial arts in order to progress faster with my running?

How did I determine WHAT I needed to work on in order to see the progress I wanted with my running?

Set Bigger Goals

You've probably heard the cliche saying about shooting for the moon and landing among the stars.

I've long suspected that big goals held more power.

Recently I came across this idea articulated more clearly in a book called '10x is Easier than 2x', which I'm in the middle of reading.

Ironically aiming big actually works better because when you change the goal drastically, it forces your brain to produce a list of new solutions and potential action items to account for scale of the new vision.

Setting bigger goals forces your brain to generate a list of new WHAT's to work on.

Had you aimed for a 'practical goal', these WHATs would not have otherwise been apparent to you.

Example -

• Practical/Marginal Goal: Increase your bench press by 5lbs in the next 12 weeks

  • With marginal goals like this, your brain is flooded with a multitude of potential actions that can be taken to increase your bench press. Most of them are just continuations of what you're already doing:

    • Do a little bit more bench press

    • Improve technique

    • Eat a little bit more

    • Train a little harder

    • More potent pre-workout

• Big Goal: Increase your bench press by 50lbs in the next 12 weeks

  • There are fewer potential actions that would result in us achieving such an aggressive goal. The list of potential actions that we generate when setting a big goal are more focused and therefor more effective:

    • Buy a bench press specific lifting program/ get a coach

    • Stop doing other activities that take away energy from bench pressing

    • Bulk aggressively

Our outlook changes drastically simply by setting the big goal.

It forces us to shift our entire vision towards bench pressing more weight.

As a result new, more potent, WHAT's become immediately apparent.

By setting the marginal goal, we essentially just do more of what we're already doing.

It doesn't force us to take on a new perspective and consider actions that may potentially yield better results.

Ultimately we continue to work really hard for marginal gains.

The person who sets the big goal still has the same time available in the day, but the actions they are taking towards their goal are much more potent and focused.

The best part:

Even if you only achieve only 50% of the drastically larger goal, you will still have outperformed the you that achieved 100% of the marginal goal.

This approach requires you to adopt a new identity as a serious bench presser. In order to do that, you must have the psychological flexibility that is required to take on this new identity and these new WHAT's.

How I've changed my approach recently:

1. Keep a running list of ideas of interesting concepts as they pop into my head

2. Pick one of those ideas every week to expand upon in this newsletter

3. Implement those ideas and use the experience to reinforce my positions, or as ammunition to change my mind.

4. Reflect on times when I achieved a great outcome and identify the things that I did and did not do in order to make that achievement possible