In which Wolf discusses the importance of making things better, without also making them worse. Watch this episode on YouTube here: https://youtu.be/m456-7-aGyg
Do you want your life to get better? Do you want your land your dream job or increase your business profits? Do you want to improve your health or physique? Do you want to fix your existing relationships, or find a love relationship that can last a lifetime?
If you’re perfectly content with everything in your life as it is right now, this video isn’t for you. But if you think things could be bet better, then something needs to change.
As it’s been said: the only constant in life is change. But as the seconds on the clock tick by and turn into days, months, and years, how much of this change is guided by mindfulness? In my last video I spoke of the power of mindfulness, and another concept that’s closely related to that is focus.
When you become mindful and focus, then change becomes much easier to create. But hold on a minute— change for it’s own sake isn’t what we’re after here. Some people spend their whole lives chasing change, but never see things improve.
So here’s the first secret I want to teach you: all improvement requires change, but not all change is an improvement.
In fact, most of the changes you could make right now to your life or business actually wouldn’t be improvement. Odds are that just any old change you make will only make things worse. So obviously, you want to create change that is also improvement.
Maybe you start taking additional professional training, or get a gym membership, or join an online dating service. When you come up with an idea for creating change that you also think will create improvement, you’re searching for a solution.
And here’s the second secret: the biggest cause of new problems? Bad solutions. In 2016 USA Today reported that average gym memberships cost $60 per month, and almost 70% of gym memberships go entirely unused! So if you’re one of those people who have great intentions but aren’t actually going to the gym, you now have a $60 loss each month— your proposed solution has not worked, and has created an even bigger problem!
The trick is to come up with solutions that actually work, and that don’t cause bigger problems.
The software I wrote, Flying Logic, is used by businesses around the world to help them come up with deep solutions to deep problems, and then “game them out” so they can be as certain as possible that they won’t end up causing bigger problems. But right now I want to give you three quick tips and will help you improve your work or personal life.
First, implement small changes. When a situation seems overwhelming, you have to get away from thinking there is no solution. That sort of helpless mindset just leads to not even trying. As Jordan Peterson has said, “Clean your room!” I’ve known some problem clutterers in my life, and they have psychological issues that manifest as physical clutter. But most people have areas of disorder in their life that look overwhelming, so we prefer not to look. Instead of not looking, just take a small corner of the problem, and clean it up. If that still seems too overwhelming, keep narrowing down. Just a single piece of furniture, like a nightstand. Clean it up, and then pronounce it “sacred”. By the way, sacred just means “set apart for a particular purpose.” Once something is clean, commit to not cluttering it again.
Improvement, however small, is still improvement.
Second, implement changes you can sustain. As you start to make tiny improvements, you’ll sometimes find that your efforts stall. Two ways to make sure you sustain your tiny improvements are first of all, to make yourself accountable to others. I’ve said to you, and my family and friends that I’m making a video a day for a whole year. If I don’t succeed, and especially if I just drop the ball, and go onto other, more fun things, then I know how it will reflect on my reputation in their— and your— eyes. Another way to sustain change is to take something you do every, even like, you know, getting up and use that behavior as an anchor for your improvement activity. This is why a lot of people find that exercise first thing in the morning works for them. You don’t have to waste energy debating with yourself about when you're gonna go to the gym: you just get up, and then it's time to go.
Okay, third, *fix your environment*. Often one of the biggest barriers to change is our environment. And “environment” in this context often means the company we keep. If you know your friends are the sort who will tease you for saying you want to improve your life, then maybe you should hang out with them less. Getting completely out of your bucket of crabs can be scary, and they will try to pull you back in. But as they say: some friends are for a reason, some are for a season, and some are for a lifetime. Friends for a reason can come and go as your reasons for them change. Friends for a season have another name: fair-weather friends. Friends for a lifetime will always encourage and support you when you a striving for a better life.
I’ll have a lot more to say later on creating change that is also improvement. If you got something good out of this vide0, please like it, and maybe subscribe to the channel. Or at least leave me a quick comment and tell me what you thought. See you tomorrow!