A mistake is a lesson, not a loss. It’s a temporary, necessary detour, not a dead end, as long as we learn from it.
As human beings we often make the same fundamental mistakes over and over again. For example, deep down we know it’s smart to take it one step at a time, to maintain good daily habits, and to seek out healthy, supportive environments. Yet we often do the exact opposite when times get stressful and we’re under pressure.
Yes, we do the wrong things even though we know better because the human mind has weaknesses. It becomes forgetful and insensible sometimes. And the only way to conquer these weaknesses is to practice conquering them. So today, let’s practice strengthening our minds by discussing three super-common mistakes Angel and I have seen plaguing dozens of our coaching clients, course students, and conference attendees over the past 15 years — some things many of us do daily that drain nearly all of our potential…
1. Waiting to feel more confident before taking the next step.
Countless people misinterpret how confidence works. They think confidence is something they have to possess before they can perform at their best. So they decide to wait until they feel more confident before taking the next step. But waiting around isn’t a confidence-building activity, so they never feel more confident and they never take action.
Let this be your wake-up call…
Confidence is not a prerequisite to present and future performance. Rather, confidence is a direct bi-product of past performance.
For example, if you start your day on the right foot, you’re likely to have improved confidence throughout the rest of your day. Conversely, if you start your day poorly and fall flat on your face, that prior performance will likely lower your confidence for a short time (until your confidence level inevitably cycles again).
But the real kicker is the fact that today is tomorrow’s past. Your confidence going into tomorrow is directly dependent on you taking positive action today and learning from it. And this means two things:
- You can leverage your present actions to improve your future confidence.
- Forcing yourself to take the next step is the first step to feeling more confident.
So whenever you catch yourself waiting around for more confidence to magically arrive before you start working on the task in front of you, remind yourself of how confidence works, and then force yourself to start before you feel ready.
Back in 2008 Angel and I started the blog (and life’s work) that would ultimately become Marc and Angel Hack Life. We didn’t know how to design a website. We didn’t know what a blog was. We didn’t even really know how to write very well. All we knew were five things:
- We recently lost two loved ones to death (mental and physical illnesses).
- We were grieving and struggling in our personal and professional lives.
- We needed an outlet.
- We were interested in writing, and improving our writing.
- We had not been writing enough.
How did we learn to start a website and build a blog? How did we find the confidence necessary to do so? Same way anyone else does it: bit by bit, step by step, one page at a time.
You start reading and learning. You make decisions and take action. You make mistakes. You learn some. You try again. You get a little better. You get a little more confident. You learn some more. You make more decisions and take more action…
And before we knew it, we were blogging daily on Marc and Angel Hack Life.
This process is at the core of all effective confidence-building and goal-achieving initiatives, and it’s one of the most essential skills you need to develop to succeed in life. It doesn’t matter if you want to be a blogger, an entrepreneur, an artist, or a doctor. Learn to start before you feel ready, and you will learn how to succeed, step by step, before you even realize you’re good enough.
2. Succumbing to big thinking paralysis.
Just as you don’t need more confidence to take the next smallest step forward, you don’t need more and more planning and overthinking either…
Stephen King once said, “Amateurs sit and wait for inspiration, the rest of us just get up and go to work.” I have that quote taped up in my home office. It reminds me that while proper planning, strategizing and masterminding is important as you move through a project, it’s also extremely easy to lose yourself indefinitely in doing so.
When our great ideas are still just concepts floating around in our minds, we tend to think really BIG. And while thinking big isn’t inherently bad, the downside is that it often makes the barrier for taking action quite high. In other words, we tend to overthink our projects to the point where they seem more complicated than they actually are, and so we stall again and again to give ourselves more time to prepare for the next step.
To avoid “big thinking paralysis,” pare your bigger ideas down into simpler, immediately testable activities. Can you trial-run the idea of a larger scale conference by hosting a series of smaller local events? Can you take an idea for a book and test it by writing several related blog posts (like Angel and I did with “1,000 Little Things Happy, Successful People Do Differently”)? Can you draw it before you build it? Can you prototype it? Once you’ve tested your idea on a smaller scale, you’ll have the insight and data you need to take your idea and project to the next level.
And along these very same lines, also remind yourself that big goals don’t make positive changes happen, small daily habits do. Because too often we obsess ourselves with a big goal — a monumental end result — but we’re completely unfocused when it comes to the habit (the small recurring steps) that ultimately makes the goal happen. And so the weight of this big unrealized goal sits heavy in the mind and brings our progress down to a crawl.
Does that sound at all familiar?
If so, it’s time to shift your daily focus AWAY from your goals. Think about this…
If you completely ignored one of your goals for the next few weeks and instead focused solely on the daily habits that reinforce this goal, would you still get positive results?
For example, if you were trying to lose weight and you ignored your goal to lose 20 pounds, and instead focused only on eating healthy and exercising each day, would you still get results?
YES, you would! Gradually you would get closer and closer to your goal without even thinking about it.
3. Working hard in unhealthy, unsupportive environments.
No matter how good your habits are, and no matter how much determination and willpower you have, if you keep yourself positioned in an environment that works against your best intentions, you will eventually succumb to that environment.
This is where so many of us who get #1 and #2 right make life-altering missteps. When we find ourselves struggling to make progress in an unhealthy environment, we somehow believe that we have no other choice — that positioning ourselves in a more supportive environment, even for short intervals, is impossible. So rather than working in a supportive environment that pushes us forward, we expend all our energy trying to pull the baggage of an unhealthy environment along with us. And eventually, despite our best efforts, we run out of energy.
The key thing to remember here is that, as a human being, your environment immensely affects you. And, consequently, one of the best uses of your energy is to consciously choose and design working and living environments for yourself that support and facilitate the outcomes you intend to achieve.
For example, if you’re trying to reduce your alcohol consumption, you must…
- Spend less time around people that consume alcohol.
- Spend less time in social environments that promote alcohol consumption.
Because if you don’t your willpower will eventually collapse…
“One more drink won’t hurt, right?”
Wrong!
You need to set clear boundaries, commit, and then reconfigure your environment to make the achievement of your commitment possible.
Let’s think about some other common examples:
- If you want to lose weight, your best bet is to spend more time in healthy environments with people who eat healthy and exercise on a regular basis.
- If you want to become a paid, professional comedian — a goal one of our Getting Back to Happy Course students recently achieved — your best bet is to surround yourself with professional comedians, do local gigs together, share experiences, and orient your living and working environment to that goal.
- If you want to overcome your struggles and live a happier life, your best bet is to spend more time communicating with people who share these same intentions. This can be achieved through local support groups, personal-growth conferences like Think Better, Live Better, or online via courses and supportive communities.
The bottom line is that habits, determination, and willpower will only get you so far. If you want to make a substantial, positive, long-term change in your life, you also have to change your environment accordingly. This is truly the foundation of how we evolve as human beings. We mold and adapt to our environments, gradually, for better or worse. Thus, conscious growth involves decisively seeking out or creating enriching environments that encourage you to grow.
Now, it’s your turn…
Yes, it’s your turn to forgive yourself if you’ve recently mishandled one or more of the points above… Forgive yourself for the mistakes you’ve made, for the times you lacked clarity, for the missteps that created needless delays or stress. These are all vital lessons. And what matters most right now is your willingness to learn and grow from them.
But before you go, please leave Angel and me a comment below and let us know what you think of this essay. Your feedback is important to us. 🙂
Which one of the points above resonated the most today?
Finally, if you have not done so already, be sure to sign-up for our free newsletter to receive new articles like this in your inbox each week.
bleu says
Inspiring! I really like this post. It came at a perfect time for me. Time to work on my environment, especially when I’m trying to focus on my business.
James Ongati says
Thanks for posting these three mistakes. I seriously identify with them. Your post just gave the motivation to reinforce all three because I have already started the journey of starting a business venture. Thanks and keep up the support.
Carl W Aderhold says
As coincidental I’m going thru this same problem for the last year & a half. The death of my spouse.. And just today having another neg. day came up with the same solution as you did in this transcript.. Thank You
Dev says
Excellent post! I’m starting before I feel ready today, and “learning the way on the way.”
Lexie Lee says
Great essay. Along with habits, I try to live in the present. I make plans and goals for the future, but my focus is on today. What am I doing today that will make that difficulty or thing I want to change better? And of course environment is everything. That’s something I sometimes forget. Thanks.
Fernando Tremonti says
Greetings from Brazil! I loved this post. It really shifted my perspective today. I love the point on starting before you feel ready. Hugs.
Mike says
Number 3 is fascinating–never thought about it in this way before. Thanks for your insight!
Janis says
Such a well written article. All three resonate deeply. I will refer back to this article frequently.
Lori Anne says
Thanks. I really do hesitate to take that first step on a very regular basis. This is the wale-up call I needed.
Larry Green says
Your interest in others makes for a better community, nation and world. Thanks for sharing.
Kishor says
Very inspiring and motivating blog. I see alcohol example matching with my life.
Mary Stockinger says
Good Morning!
All 3 points hit home hard this morning. Its like you know me! Wow!!!!
Keeping to read again. Thank You
DD says
Outstanding article! Environment is what I struggle with. Difficult to control or change when there are multiple factors, individuals involved. While not everyone always can change their environment, I still think progress can be made if one is conscious of a negative environment and yet has the determination to make it happen. Yes, it will be harder with the baggage; but not impossible.
Susan says
The Prayer of Serenity is wonderful:
“God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
Courage to change the things I can,
And the wisdom to know the difference” but…
I kept getting hung up on the first line. I kept seeking and waiting for the serenity to come. It was when I finally accepted, the best I could, the things I could not change and made the (small at first) changes that the serenity started showing up and grew as I went forward.
Debbie says
Setting that Big Goal aside and focusing on daily habits! That has been my biggest issue in starting anything! Thank you for continuing to post inspiring articles!
Luz Cooney says
THANK YOU NEED IT TO HEAR THAT VERY INSPIRING .!
Helen says
Loved this message. I have been putting off sending out a children’s book I self-published. It’s time to send it out!
Thanks,
Helen in Maryland….I love your blog and read it whenever I see it in my emails.
SUNDARARAJU RENGARAJU says
Super. Thank you.
Jal says
Greeting from Kenya, nice article
Miguel Herrera E. says
Excellent perspective to creatively modify our productive environment, reduce excessive focus on expecting more confidence than necessary to take action and moderate obsessive attention to great ideas, those that distract you from the enjoyment of satisfactory and fundamental achievements. I dedicated myself to translating this post into Spanish (with Google Translate corrected, since I do not speak English), for better personal reading and if it seems appropriate, I would forward it to your email
Ray says
Your words have brought me a new perspective on how i have been living my life and how i can make incremental changes add up to real change for a happier and fulfilling life.
Thank you!
Rhaea says
Hello
The second one, Big Thinking Paralysis spoke to me. I have many creative ideas but can get bogged down by looking at the whole mountain instead of focusing on this step
Thank you. I find your posts encouraging and helpful.
Justina says
Thank you for this exceptional article – how it is written, what it covers, and why it is so important for each one of us to take a hard look at what we repeatedly “feel, think and do.”
I struggle with all three scenarios. It literally is like you were listening to a conversation I was having with myself – and you heard. Such great feelings: to be heard, validated, and understood! (Much better than feeling frustration, listening to my self-critic
and having helpless feelings about getting from A to B, much less
A to P.)
Especially timely is the environment scenario – relative to me, and also my husband. It has been a great source of pain (even suffering) between us as to what “our environment” at home looks like – literally and figuratively. The importance of “being responsible for making your good life choices” hits home big time also.
So, starting over – again – in “trying, learning and tweaking.”
Thank you for explaining how “just doing it” can naturally lead to progress and real change in our lives. That through failure, comes “another chance” (and maybe some enlightenment – if one is willing). That with small changes, new habits, and “doing things differently,” we can progress to real confidence, significant self-trust, yearned for satisfaction and a well-earned pride in ones’ self.
So very good to hear! Your message brings me hope!!
[And, much appreciation for reminding us to not beat ourselves up if we have done any or all of the scenarios identified, whether a lot or a little. Being kind to ourselves – and each other – is much more supportive and helpful.]
Thanks for all of your caring work and insights! Keep them coming … Love what you two are doing and sharing 🙂
Gabriel says
This is so insightful. The Big Thinking Paralysis has been my drawback from taking that initial move. Also this is also powerful –
“And along these very same lines, also remind yourself that big goals don’t make positive changes happen, small daily habits do.” My gratitude runs really deep.
Scott says
Wow, thank you. A friend forwarded this to me and it both reinforced the changes I am making in my life, as well as giving me ideas for new ways to improve my life. Especially “change unhealthy environments”. I’m going through a divorce and I am seeing more and more that it was a necessary change: painful, but totally necessary for me to resume making progress.
Thank you!
Mary E Andersen says
I am trying to incorporate these (and your other) good sense ideas into my life transition as my husband now has mild cognitive issues combined with multiple medical issues. Life has to make sense first in order to manage ambiguous life events well.
Lou says
Thank you. Yes small steps are what’s needed and starting before your ready. And so true about the surroundings in our life.
Eva says
Thank you for this…good reminders…my take aways…”Amateurs sit and wait for inspiration, the rest of us just get up and go to work”, testing ideas on a small scale, and environment…being with the people who are on the same wavelength and goals…
Henly Dopo says
To be honest, this article sported me right form where I was hiding and putting me out in the broad daylight. All of the messages in the 3 points really challenged me. This are my day to day challenges I have been fighting on without no one knowing. I am so thankful that you mastered this pieces together. Now I have just learnt that there is a way out for me. I am challenging myself now to master this approaches and and will make them become part of my daily habits.
Thank you sharing this masterful piece. Our Great Gon in Heaven will continue to guide you with his wisdom. Amen.
Natasha says
Wow! Exactly what I needed to hear today. I felt like I was actually working towards my goals while in school and around like-minded people. This explains my desire to return to school. I am guilty of all 3. And knowing what my issues are is half of the solution. I will definitely be saving this to refer to each morning as I work towards my goals. Thank you!!!! 🙂
UMA DEVI says
Very practical and inspiring.
Charles says
Great article and inspired writing. Agree with point number one whole heartedly just get the ball rolling each and every day whether you feel confident or not.
It’s the little consistent steps that matter each and every day. The story of the Tortoise and hare comes into mind. Plod along like the Tortoise and you will reach the finish line eventually.