The grounded and wise Jay Shetty believes that in relationships, and specifically disagreements, the worse thing people do is figure out how to handle it on the fly. This makes sense because it’s an emotional encounter that likely has skewed decision making. Jay proposes something else. He proposes setting ground rules and expectations ahead of time while things are good.

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I’m definitely curious to see how this works. While it might compromise the current bliss of the relationship when things are good, it prepares you for when things turn. It’s definitely a tradeoff, and this might be a good way to make emotional relationships a bit more sustainable and consistent.

Awhile back I was in San Francisco and I linked up with a friend. While we were catching up, I told him that I wanted to take up surfing and for Christmas I was going to get a Wetsuit. He loves surfing, and he told me, “Dude! I’m going to be in San Diego in two weeks, we have to get a surf sesh”.  I had worked out with my mom that I would choose a Wetsuit I like, that fit well,  and get reimbursed for it. What this did was it created a deadline by which I needed to get my Wetsuit, in order to use it when my buddy visited, and it motivated me to take action on it much quicker than I normally would have.

What this helped me realize is, deadlines help you prioritize and take action. I could have done months of research and stalled my decision. I could have put choosing my Wetsuit off for a less hectic time. But, the deadline held me accountable to a certain date, and it forced me to expedite my process to meet it.

It’s no surprise that setting deadlines are really effective at driving action and boosting productivity. So, after this experience what I did was I went out and bought a calendar whiteboard, and got to work on setting firmer deadlines for those more ominous elements of my work and life. I look forward to seeing how the rigidity and structure help me to be more on top of the things I need to get done!

Is there something in your life that’s just bland? It’s not great, and it’s not horrible. It’s definitely not ideal, but it’s not doing too much harm, so it’s probably best to just leave it as is.

You may recall something Nir Eval described in a past SISD, it’s this idea that our natural state is to avoid discomfort. And if this thing is providing a slight consistent discomfort, shouldn’t we be motivated to rid ourselves of it? Yet, we don’t. Why is that?

“It’s the devil you know or the devil you don’t”. This discomfort is familiar. It’s predictable and we've become accustomed to it. It’s even gotten easier over time because we’ve become desensitized to it, and rationalized our way into being more okay with its presence. This is the devil you know.

The devil you don’t know is uncharted territory. In its unpredictability, you can’t be sure that it will make things better. It’s the fear of more discomfort induced by taking action that keeps us from trying it in the first place. We have this bad habit of accepting the realities in our life,  and it’s rooted in this thought.

But, when we get the courage to make a change, challenge ourselves to be vulnerable and outside our comfort zone, we often find that it wasn’t as bad as we made it out to be. And in doing so, we can get rid of our inconveniences, our discomfort, and step into a more authentic and fulfilled self.

Life is hard.

It is. It really is, and it’s okay to feel that way. I think we all try to put on a thick skin so that we feel it a little less, and choose not to talk about it because it’s stigmatized that it reflects negatively on us as people. I’m sure we’d be surprised by the number of people we come across every single day who are struggling, but don’t have the confidence to share that with others. Life hurts when it doesn’t go according to plan. Life presents real challenges and obstacles, and the adjustments we make don’t always make things better. That’s just the reality of it.

Yea life is hard, but compared to what? Compared to not having this opportunity in the first place? Compared to what others are dealing with. The difficulty of life is a big spectrum and there’s no real point of relativity. The super wealthy have a difficult time finding and keeping genuine close relationships. The poor have a difficult time covering their basic dietary and sanitary needs. They’re both very different, and one sounds a whole lot worse than the other, but can we know for sure?

That is why I challenge you today to be mindful about the details of your life, and the challenges within it. What is it about your life that makes it hard? It’s probably something extremely specific and contextualized to your life. Then, the question becomes, what can you do about it? Yes, life is hard, and it’s okay to feel that way, but don’t let it restrict you. You are capable of the work required to make your situation better every day.

Before I go into the quote, I think it’s important to understand what motivation is: the dictionary definition is “the reason one has for acting or behaving in a particular way.”

Does that sound a little different than you expected ? It makes motivation much more tangible and measurable than I thought.

To motivate yourself means to identify your reasons. What is it on a personal or emotional level that moves you, that inspires you to take action?

That leads to the second part which is to aim to be better every day. This is the action I just referred to relates to the process of personal development, and the day by day grind of making progress.

Now let’s put it all together. What are your reasons for making progress on a daily basis? That’s not a question I can answer for you. This is where you need to identify why you value pursuing your potential.

I can only speak for myself. I pursue personal development because I know that when I put in the work to develop skills and mentality, I can be more efficient with my efforts and more impact in the areas that matter to me, which ultimately is to help others find meaning and fulfillment in their lives.

On apple podcasts, my episodes have been formatted wrong and new listeners haven’t been able to find my latest episodes. This pretty closely correlates with the growth of my podcast plateauing. The frustrating part is, had I not made this mistake, my podcast would probably be 150% as big as it is now.

I share all of that to demonstrate my mentality through this. I experienced every emotion from disappointment to gratitude, but what stood out was how I decided to take action. After understanding the problem, and seeing the two hour solution in front of me, I justified the work and began to work on it. That’s when my girlfriend, Irene,  very politely asked if she could try something and found a way to expedite the process expeditiously. She, then, went on to work on my behalf and rectify the mistake, and about a half hour later it was fixed.

Here, I want to highlight two important things. Upon realizing the problem, and its implications, I decided to adopt a forward thinking mindset. I knew I couldn’t change the past, so I did my best to take action and move forward as best as I could. However, my judgment was still clouded as I was suppressing emotion, and had it not been for Irene I would have taken really inefficient action. That’s the second point. Even when I was emotional, I should have taken more time to think through what those next action steps were.

With those two things in mind I am optimistically looking forward.